Financial Peace University Experience | Budgeting | Elevation+

[Music] so [Music] so [Music] hello everyone and welcome to week one of the fpu experience i think this has been long awaited we've been super excited yeah we have to be able to come together and talk about it hopefully if you're joining us you heard the message from dave ramsey spoiler alert tonight is all about our finances and how to accomplish financial freedom and we're gonna kick it off in week one talking about budgeting but if you don't know it i'm brittany atkinson and i'm our egret's pastor that's right i i wanted this when we logged on here i wanted to be like welcome to lmps it's a little bit of a different format i'm excited to be here uh my name is chad i'm the online pastor um and um when brit came to me and was chatting about just this uh whole thing me and my wife went through this a long time ago yeah yeah yeah this is like a refresher course so uh we were just pumped to even just be able to be a part of it yeah that's right thanks for the invite yeah i'm super glad that all of you are here i'm excited to be here similarly chad like i went through this a long time ago but i'm talking like 10 years ago so life has changed so much where like the first time i went through financial peace i was single wasn't married didn't have a kid and so now it's going to be super exciting to go through this in my new stage of life so much has happened can we say to somebody we'll get over there in a second but there's a lot of people who are joining from all over the world um candace from jamaica yvette from the bronx all over um cindy from missouri trinidad and sebago what's up let us know your name and where you're joining from in the chat because it's okay wow that's amazing miss nate yeah all over you're part of a global family here heather moretti we know heather she's part of our e-fam hey heather glad you're here uh jake where is he needs a private coaching session okay you're going to follow up with chris brown okay we'll be your channel to you guys my name is danny hicks i'm also one of our online pastors and super excited to be here we were talking about this a bit before but my husband and i my husband jordan um he and i budget we've worked hard to not carry credit card debt we have a lot of patterns in place but this is actually our first time officially going through financial peace university we've heard about it a lot know a bit about it but um we're going to be going through it through the program so super excited nice yeah my name is brandon i am on a different side of the camera brandon hibbard um normally i'm the one helping make sure the cameras are paid for i'm in our finance department here at the church but i'm super excited to be right here this evening financial peace is your job but you also brandon like um brandon we're super excited to have him with us today because he's actually the person that walks our staff through this so as a staff we've been doing this in our culture for years yeah helping make sure that our staff is set up for success financially yeah and you're one of the key people that helps make that happen so we're super excited to learn from you tonight thank you yeah as well so i would like to know just get like a vibe of who's joining us we are here tonight one of the cool things that we want to do we know that you can watch these videos and that you're going to learn a lot from that but one of the things that we're most excited about is coming together and talking about what does our bible actually say about this concept yeah can we really get scripture in our hearts and can we understand why this matters and i know that we all want to be free in our finances we all want to experience that but also even more than that can we honor god through it yeah so we're excited to dig into a little bit of that tonight but before we get started with all of that what are you believing for would you take a moment and just drop in the chat what it is that you're believing god for because you're here for a reason you're here for something that you want to experience in your life what is that thing and would you just declare it right now in the chat and i also want us to be praying for each other through this process so we're going to come together for six weeks this is a six week process we're building community here we're going to hold each other accountable we're going to make sure that we're walking through these baby steps together yep but it kind of starts with declaring it and encouraging each other like that we dave ramsey talked about this who are you surrounding yourself with yeah that's right like-minded people that's right and i just kind of want to get a feel for what that's going to look like with this group of people i'm excited to experience it yeah i feel i feel like it's important what you say too and that you know financial habits that can be something that's very separated from people's faith a lot of times and so when you talk about putting it through the filter of what god says about it i think that's really important for this community and that the people we surround ourselves with are speaking through that filter yeah that's a big deal well and i mean you've probably heard it said jesus talked more about money than almost any other topic in the bible and what i've seen from getting to meet with a bunch of people and helping you know helping different families walk through this is money touches every single aspect of your life and so when your financial part of your life is not in good order then you're going to experience that stress in your relationships your faith all the other parts of your life so i'm so excited for people to to be able to walk through this yeah all these people in the chat i love it everything is flying with people saying and more generosity yeah oneness in our finances financial freedom candace williams to get rid of all my debt and bias i like to run a lot of the time molly i'm sure there are others who could say me too financial freedom yeah wisdom with large amounts look at that generational wealth yolanda said generational wealth i think that would be something that you know i would believe for too yeah i love it like and we like i haven't seen it yet but like breaking generational curses too i know is another thing that in conversation has come up you know and that's something that we're going to start tonight yeah and we're walking through this one one of the things that we were talking about before we got on brick kept telling us like stop talking this is this is what we need to talk about but what i was sharing is one of the things that me and my wife are believing for even just going through this is we just started having this conversation with our kids and it's not that we've got it all covered and we've you know don't even talk to us about money that's so tricky but we're really trying to impart this we have a ten-year-old and an eight-year-old and so we feel good on the same page marriage-wise about our finances but then to bring our family along from a young age so that they're they don't find themselves in some of the positions we even found ourselves in like how did we get this debt early on in our marriage like how did that even happen well if we can help train our kids early on and so we've we've even just started having these conversations um with our kids and it it's not easy they're like what about my blog but we're really that's one of the things that i really believe i love that i love that and we have some pretty cool stuff going in the chat one of the things that we also want to do because you're taking the time to be here we want to invest in you so what we also want to do every week is we're going to have some fun surprises some fun giveaways that we're gonna give to a few people and i just see some pretty cool stuff going in the chat and so i know i think we should each give away if you watch the video you know what this is this is an envelope system these are beautiful by the way when i sat down i was like oh my goodness these are amazing i don't know if you guys can see it and so yeah but these are the systems that they talked about in the video for week one if you haven't watched it it's not too late go back in your financial piece and your ramsay plus or on the website if you're international yeah watch the first video but they talked about using an envelope like cash system and just to get you guys started we want to give uh delisa weary said i love giveaways so i'm giving you a giveaway you're gonna get one of these delisa to claim your prize i need you to email egroops at elevationchurch.org and we're going to get your information and we're going to send you one of these beautiful and you guys can also give one away if you see any i have someone i have someone ready patty moore she said she was wishing for financial freedom and uh to be a better giver i think man to continue to be more and more generous and to work through retirement so uh patty we hope that this is an encouragement to you today we're gonna send you one of these amazing wallets yeah this black one is really sweet this is coming your way if you'll send that send your information to egroops elevationchurch.org um slow down the chat there you can't even see the people um let's see here uh gosh there's so many oh i saw it go down just a little bit um lydia brooks i'm 60 years old 60 years old and don't know how to budget we're going to get you started well that's great this is coming your way to you this is coming your way to get you started email throw that lower third back up again so they can see there you go so email this now listen everybody don't email that and you're like you're going to get laughs we're in church lydia you do that and then one more yeah we'll get one more way hey well while we're finding one i do want to say one thing can we share in the chat i think it'd be great for maybe people that were subscribed to elevation plus but maybe didn't yet sign up for this you may have got the notification when we went live can we share in the chat guys that link for you to still sign up for research absolutely um just so that you can make sure you're taking part in this if you didn't already get to kind of buy some time click it if you are not signed up yet so we can get all these free resources yep that's right who do you see that one right there is amazing that we've got highlighted yeah andrew and i'm so sorry i don't know how to say jeremiah ortiz yeah i love that they said breaking the chains of debt setting the foundation for generations that will come starting with your son we should send them too because that's like a couple let's do it i love it our way i love that awesome we'll be giving a few more of these away in just a little bit that's great um but while you know we get to that first we want to get to know you a little bit and so if you watched the video already then you saw this little thing that rachel cruz was talking about or she was talking about which language to me was a little bit offended but i i'm i think it's because of where i landed it depends on where you fall nerd and free spirit quiz and we're going to play that right now so that you can learn a little bit more about you and we can learn about you too see what type of people that we have joining us and so here's how this is going to work we're going to read you some questions and we just need you to put an a or b in the chat for where you fall and then from there after we get our little tallies on if you're more a or more b brandon our expert tonight he loves when we call him this by the way yeah um but he's going to talk you through some things about it okay so i'm going to kick us off with the first question all right um drop an arb in the chat the first one you're prepared for tax day months in advance or b tax day that's in october right so which one is your tendency what is your bends um let us know in the chat if you fall under a or if you fall under b okay i um i don't want to give away too much and i'm a little embarrassed because i'm actually married to an accountant but i definitely i know enough no it's not really in october but i definitely will fall more in the b i'm like what's that deadline again when does does that even really matter do i have to really do that and my husband's like yes yes you do you do have to do this legally you have to do see if my if my wife didn't take care of it i think i would know what it is but i don't so i'm like i like right this moment i'm like taxi oh that's like what because and my wife is watching this right now too and so she does this and i don't have to think about when tax day is there's so many a's in the chat room okay we've got some nerds okay i love it um um you want to take the next one absolutely so either a rules are important and should always be followed or b rules are more like suggestions negotiating yeah oh lots of b's this one i feel like could potentially change based on the scenario see i'm this is where i'm weird because i'm an a for this one okay interesting i respect rules i do i appreciate them what about you guys so i was pondering why you say that i think when it comes to finances i feel like um i don't know i'm more like won a discussion with it i guess like less rules and like when we when i was watching the video and she said hey don't call we're not going to call it rules because that stresses everyone out she was talking to me because i'm like yes exactly like when i think about rules within my finances i get like i tense up a little bit so in this area i think i like it like no it's a suggestion and we talk about it there's so many a's on this one i see it um the next one a you are always on time always b you show up on time give or take 15 minutes i was raised in a military family so that was made for me you i was gonna say you are late if you are 15 minutes like if you're not like 15 minutes early right i think my mom's joining us and she will attest to that like they my parents don't play with that always on time my basketball coach same way yep five minutes early is late i tend to struggle a little bit i know y'all will call me out if i don't admit to it so i was just waiting i was looking at danny gonna talk about 15 minutes but i do struggle with a five minute behind thing i do i'm working on it so you're late make an interesting like yeah just pieces pieces to the puzzle all right i'll hit the next one let's move on so we don't have the time i don't know what c is but i love it in between neither um okay you make a plan for each day of your vacation oh this is like a attention point for me here you make a plan for each day of your vacation or vacations are more fun with no schedule where do you land a or b what about you guys um i'm on both sides of that yeah i like a schedule as long as i don't have to make it oh interesting does that make sense that no that makes tons of sense my my uh wife thank you honey because it's a blessing it really is what she'll do is because like i don't want to make a decision about like vacation i'm like ah i don't know but then she's like well i've planned some things in case we do want to do something okay and so then we can do them so i really appreciate that because like options so she's planning you know and has some options exactly so kind of both yeah a little bit of both i think mine depends on the location too if you're at the beach no i don't want to plan for the beach but if i'm going to a new city or something i want to know at least what i'm going to accomplish in that time rachel said who goes on vacation yeah true okay that's fair um the next one uh you read the introductions of books they're in there for a reason or b you skip introductions only chapters count where are you guys at with this one this one's a little bit tricky it's a mixed bag here you do i do too yeah i think i'm not surprised that you read the introduction yeah i skim the introduction i'm like wham go right past it i don't have time for this oh i'm learning so much about you tonight guys um you want to hit the next one uh absolutely so your life's motto is a place for everything and everything in its place or b you live by the phrase it'll all work out faster i'm more and more a yeah same mm-hmm i'm so yeah i'm so split um the next one you organize your shirts by color doesn't everyone you're doing good just get your shirts awesome i do organize by color later or not it's my split really i do yeah otherwise it's hard to find things in my closet so i get a little weird i could totally see that it's amazing trying to see where the chat's at we're pretty i mean it's yeah but lots of bees for this one which i appreciate thank you guys all right this is a serious one the last can't wait to create your every dollar budget here we go um or b you're considering faking announcements for the budget committee meeting that's amazing that is incredible this is the telltale one this is the one that i can't wait to see as you guys are flooding the chat with your answers um brandon yes can you break down for us what do these mean if you're more a or more b what do we need to know about ourselves to set ourselves up for success through this process yeah tell us a little about that man rachel did such a good job in the video first of all she she hit the highlights there but you know if if you're the nerd um and it depends too i guess on if you're married or if you're you're a single person that really definitely affects the dynamic of how you're how you're working through this actually a lot of i saw multiple people in the chat commenting that about being single and using all that yeah yeah but you know in general the nerd is going to love the budget cannot wait to get that set up and live by it live within those rules and so um in a in a marriage relationship let them kind of drive it make a first pass at the budget but it is i mean it's crucial in a marriage relationship for both to be involved yeah and so that's where the free spirit has to come in um i think rachel says your job is you have to look at me laughing no no no no no it's an open conversation but uh the free spirit has to show up for the budget committee meeting yes give input be involved she used the phrase you cannot say whatever you want to do so you know you got to be involved yeah um but obviously it's different if you're if you're single then if you're a nerd it works out but if you're a single free spirit you need some some voices in your life yeah that's a great ability partner a mentor who can really lean in and help hold you accountable to your budget to that process we talked about this a little bit earlier but for me i got married a week before i turned 30 and so i had spent a long a long large part of my life managing my finances on my own and when i got married this was a big point of contention for us because i would often feel controlled by budgeting and setting aside specific you know groupings of money and all that and so it's been a journey for us because that's a real thing going from being single to married and then having that adjustment process and when you talked about the importance of being unified it's so true because that is what allows you to not just be on the same page but also to be understanding to be able to express things so i know they were joking about both people need to show up but i think for so many of you too it's not just showing up but really being present approaching that conversation with grace and understanding whether you're the nerd or the free spirit i think it is so important in marriage because you grow so much through something tangible like coming together and agreeing on finances so big deal like break that down to what we were talking about no seriously because it was like yes because even that like it's funny but it's it's important because sometimes people look at just like this big picture and think well like i kind of know like yeah we have this much over here um and i know that's kind of just like i don't know that's over here it's not really broken apart but these guys like she was like i had to yo you tell them so sorry jordan i'm not sure if you're joining us right now um but basically a lot of times when i would go to purchase makeup items i would get a little stressed out some of the makeup things that i like mascara all these items i won't go into detail um i would sometimes feel a sense of stress when i would go to buy them or my husband would be like wait what the mascara was how much and we would always have these comments too no it's not i don't buy it yeah more expensive than what he might have imagined and so we had to actually set aside a specific amount of money to budget towards that area and it bothered me so badly at first because i'm like no no one's gonna tell me how much i mean sorry just being real like no one's gonna tell me that feels so controlling but i had to shift that mindset to and they talked about this in the video by adding budgeting you're actually finding freedom in that it's not a sense of control and it's changed things because i don't have to live in this place of like oh no i don't know if i should be buying this mascara these makeup items um and i know to many that may feel frivolous but like it's something that is of value to me and so we had to actually yeah be really intentional about having those open conversations understanding and setting aside budget for it i love it makeup line that's right um i do kind of want to talk about what scripture says about this process of creating a budget though because i know we're about to get into that and just to set us up like it's a discipline right and i know we're gonna talk about this in a second but um scripture says in hebrews 12 verse 11. no discipline seems pleasant at the time but painful amen can i get an amen danny when you're buying makeup right yes but later on however it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it yeah and that's what we want to talk about tonight creating this spirit of peace and righteousness and we want to be trained by the discipline in this yeah and when you see this i know that discipline's not necessarily always a really fun process but who doesn't want what it produces that's right do you not want a harvest of righteousness and peace but then when you think about how you get that well it comes through the discipline of what we're talking about right and i know this is applicable not just to finances but across the board but like let's talk a little bit about that and like the harvest that we want to see right and then go step by step on how to get this harvest tonight and i think that's a good place to spend the rest of our time but whenever i think about discipline i definitely kind of go back and forth with it it's actually my husband and i's word for the year okay i know you guys that if you're a part of elevation i know that you guys know that every year we choose a year uh or a word for our year and my husband and i i don't know why but we just we went for it and we chose this word and it keeps coming up and i'm really grateful that it's coming up in this because this is something that my husband and i are believing god for we want financial freedom this is something that we want to experience and growing and this is something that we want to hand to our son and we want to teach him and we want to build on yeah but then when you think about the process of going through discipline it's not like a one-time event right it's not like um you do a rep in the gym and magically discipline is done it's a practice and a daily way of life and so what has this looked like for you how would you talk about this how would you even like share with the people of our church what that's going to look like stepping into the season for them any of you can share but i mean i'll say first of all when we my wife and i went through this process i want to say maybe 10 15 years ago i forget um and it's it's a difficult process because it takes a lot of humility yeah first of all especially if you're doing it husband and wife um if you're if you're just by yourself it might just be a little like self-reflection but like to get on the same page after spending a little bit of time with money being your own and then you decide to share it and it's like oh man like we've got to decide together what to do with this sometimes we look at this and we look at all these steps in this financial peace process and we're like okay i'll just hit this one two three and you start late and you're like wait a second how am i a thousand dollars yeah how am i going to save a thousand dollars i don't have an extra 10 bucks at the end of the month how am i gonna get a thousand dollars and it looks daunting literally like daunting like and then you want to throw in the towel right away and just say forget it like i i don't even know how to do that but it is the discipline that i don't think a lot of people want i mean i didn't want to do it i didn't want to look at my look at my expenses for a month like you need to and say what how much did we spend on coffee like there's my there's my thousand dollars you know it's not in a month but you know what i'm saying it's like wait wait how much did we spend and it's tough to do that because it's exposure you know what i mean it's like i don't want to actually see the thing that i'm doing that i don't acknowledge any time and so it is difficult and i just want to acknowledge that like this isn't like just some like yeah do step one look at your budget go over and do that this is tough work it really requires self-examination yeah well you said the key thing is that it works so it takes effort on our parts yeah and then like rachel talked about how for a lot of us it feels like you're like losing permission or like it makes you feel out of control yeah but the power of a budget and we're going to break this down practically how we would suggest that you do this and we want to challenge you to come back next week with your budget okay so i'm just putting that out there that's your homework and we're gonna get we're gonna break this down in just a few minutes but i do feel like it is putting the work in and then you also feel like you're losing a lot but i love in the video how she talks about no you're actually like gaining a lot of permission yeah that's right and you're actually realizing that no you are actually more in control and you're telling your money where to go and you're no longer a slave to it yeah and i think that's key and almost awareness i feel like just having the information about understanding here's where my money is going here's the power of being able to see all right here's where maybe we need to be more aware but i think just having that pulse and awareness i know my husband is the nerd in the relationship as you can gather by some of what i've shared but he actually for the last few years tracks every single transaction in a spreadsheet and then you know it's categorizing i mean every little little one and at first that would stress me i'm like oh no um it would almost feel like a negative thing but what it did is as we started it's the awareness that it brings to be able to go oh wow this is what this pattern looks like i think for so many of us and if you're joining us and maybe you've been in a season where um you haven't had awareness of where that money is going we just want to encourage you it's not something to have to experience guilt over tonight as we talk through this but that's the point of this is we're all at a different place in the journey and being able to understand what does it mean to step into a place of financial freedom and so just to encourage you that's why we're here in the same way that we grow our faith together alongside one another that is what this looks like as well and so if you're in a place where you've been super aware and attentive to it or maybe this is the first time you're even having an intentional strategic conversation it's not about that there's such grace for wherever you fall in the process and that's why we're all here together that's right because we're all doing this together yeah you're not alone you're in good company and this is where you need to be every week because we're going to be walking through this process together i think that's important because somebody might be by listening and participating go oh man well i haven't even like written this down i haven't gone through the every dollar budget all these pieces and so really i like it and he said that's why we're doing this is because we're bringing each other along in this process and doing it as a church family too i think that's so important so brandon practically there's several of us that are just starting this process tonight literally or yeah whatever time it is where you're joining us from can you walk us through this process give us your best advice what you've seen work not work yeah to get us all started because like i said next week we're all coming back with our budgets so talk us through a little bit get us started absolutely i mean the great thing about a budget is it really is just a plan for your money no matter how much or how little comes in each month you're just wanting to make make a plan for how you're going to use the money that god has entrusted to you um i think what you spoke on chad was a perfect place to start is it usually takes some time of looking back okay what have my spending patterns been in order to understand even how to fill out a first budget i don't know what i spend on food you know when i gotta buy lunch i buy lunch so it's gonna take some work at the at the beginning to really do some past research into all right where has it been going um but then ultimately you just kind of start working through like in the every dollar app it's so great it has all these categories uh so it'll help you hopefully not forget any major you know purchases that might come up um although i think what rachel said was so good you got to give yourself grace you're gonna you're gonna mess up your first two three four budgets you're gonna forget things um you just have to have to give yourself grace and keep coming back to it but in fact you probably should mess it up right if someone's new to budgeting because you may not have had that discovery before yeah yeah but i found that the easiest way is really to start with kind of your fixed bills or payments the things that you know exactly you probably know how much your rent or your mortgage yeah your car payment you know my yeah your payments about how much in electric utilities and all of that exactly so start with those fixed things um then look at uh some other necessities but they might vary a little more so like food is a big one gas if you've got a car and you're driving those might vary a little bit month to month but are obviously necessities for your life then you i mean the whole idea is a zero-based budget so she she gives that concept basically your income minus your expenses equals zero so you're trying to make a plan for every dollar yep so the app keeps kind of a running total or if you're doing it on paper and a spreadsheet you know just kind of keep a running total but then you can start to look at some of those more discretionary type purchases makeup perhaps you guys gotta hate on the makeup for me um other things like that or certainly uh your next step in the bit in in the baby steps you know like my my challenge to everyone would be how small can you get your living expenses the areas that you can control so that you've got as much margin each month to throw at saving your thousand dollars or trying to pay off your debt um i love to in the chat you guys are sharing some good advice here so like connect your bank um so that your transactions are pulled automatically things like that i feel like and that's what this is for if you have anything that's helpful where you found that helps your budget this is a great place where you can share those little knickknacks and things that you've learned along the way so all of us don't have to try the things that we know aren't working and we can find some of the best advice here from each other um i think one of my favorite things about doing a budget and one of the things i hope will energize you the most is i know it's like daunting and people are like oh man this can be really difficult but it's also the best opportunity for you to reset your priorities that's good and to evaluate hey what am i doing what do i need to reorder what can go so that this can prevail one of those things that i know rachel cruz talks about in the video is tithing yeah yeah and i also just wanted to spend a moment talking about that because i know people have questions about it all the time yeah this is something that we've all walked through like hey what does this look like if i want to start tithing or i'm not or what does the bible even really say about that does it even matter if i do that or not and so we wanted to also just take a moment and talk you through that a little bit because you're able to now put god at the center if you're starting from scratch and creating a budget now is the time to do that you want to do that right now don't waste any time with that don't wait till you have this and that figure it out do it now while you're doing your budget i'm the tithe is 10th 10 of everything that god gives you and so whenever you guys i know that we were sharing our stories a little bit before we went live and like for me i was not raised in church and so i was like what like i didn't even get nor understand nor comprehend what a tithe even really meant and it was this concept that was so foreign to me i couldn't really grasp at first like well why would i just give 10 of what i work hard for right to the church it just really didn't click and i'm so grateful for our church because i feel like that's where i really learned the spirit of generosity i've been here for 10 years and i just remember walking through and being like you know what i am gonna actually trust god with this and i took that step yeah and i started giving and what god's done since i know that people hear this all the time um but like it really has blessed me yeah and it really is a staple of minding my husband's marriage that we want to live generously we want to be faithful okay because the tithe is really just obedience faithfulness right and then b we want to live above and beyond that we want to be generous yeah and so i do just want to take a moment like you guys maybe share like what your experience was like how you would advise that what it looks like to practically do that what does our bible say about that like let's talk about that for a few minutes that's great i think i was sharing a little bit with you guys earlier but i went through that in that i grew up going to church but no one ever really talked about why we give and why we tithe it was always perceived in my mind as this legalistic another role that needed to be followed and so if i fast forward to my early adult life out of college uh you know my first big job sort of out of school and um had a lucrative career so this was uh probably what 14 15 years ago before i was a pastor obviously and um i would give but i wouldn't tithe and so basically what i would do and just to denote the difference tithing means tenth it's the first priority though so it's as you said brit it's the 10 of all of our increase everything that god has given us but instead of tithing what i would do is i would give sporadically and in doing that it was typically when i felt like i had enough or things were in surplus and so it was logical in terms of what we might think according to um our own sort of common sense right but not too spiritual sense and so when something shifted for me i was 23 years old and somebody finally had a conversation something like this because i just hadn't been in atmospheres like we have in our church where people have open conversations that it is an act of obedience and when i started tithing and actually prioritizing it something shifted because when i gave when it felt convenient or when it felt like i had enough what i was doing is i was saying well i'm comfortable in that i have enough versus when we tithe and we prioritize it first for so many of you that maybe you're taking that first step through financial peace to giving to tithing for the first time when we tithe by prioritizing it we're not saying that we believe we have enough but that god will provide everything that we need when we open our hand to release the tithe we're saying god i trust you and so i think that is the importance even in the the app and as rachel shared it is first it is not in a month where you feel like oh i'm good i'm in a good place it's first and that's where the trust is built and so that was a game changer for me having open conversations like this and then really stepping into that place of requiring trust that's where you build trust yeah there's so many really good questions and conversation happening in the chat like um a super common one is like practically net or gross what are you tied off of yeah talk us through that a little bit brandon sure and just um how to get started if you haven't yet yeah it's great right the way i've heard that answered is i mean there's a lot of there's a lot of debate about it to be honest and i i think ultimately it's a heart matter right we know god does not need our money like he's not sitting there saying oh man you tithed off the net not the gross i'm a little short this month so ultimately it is a heart matter i think between you and god um i do think there is precedent in scripture you know there's the verse about give to caesar what is caesar gift to god what is god's so i think there's a there's a precedent for tithing off of the gross as an ideal or even exceeding the tithe but ultimately i think it's about what you were saying trusting god prioritizing him in your budget and letting him lead your spirit of generosity yeah i um there's some scriptures i know the most common one that you may have heard before is malachi um it's found in malachi and um i feel like um what it says is bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house test me in this says the lord almighty and see if i will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it i will prevent pests from devouring your crops and the vines in your fields will not drop their fruit before it is ripe says the lord almighty then all the nations will call you blessed for yours will be the delightful land says the lord almighty and you know sometimes people are like well that's old testament like does that even like apply to like today like it's not in the new testament and um i loved going through if you are part of our e-groups ministry we just are wrapping up a study called essentials it's all about going back to the basics of our faith in one of the weeks we actually talk about giving to god and i love the perspective of what jesus says in the new testament you can find this in matthew 23 23 and what it says is woe to you teachers of the law and pharisees you hypocrites you give a tenth of your spices so a tenth again is the tithe i'm 10 of your spices mint dale cumin but you have neglected the more important matters of the law justice mercy and faithfulness you should have practiced the latter without neglecting the former and so to me what this verse says is you do both and the former is just a baseline and you grow upon that like this is just being obedient it's not even accessing generosity generosity is above the tenth and so these other things it starts with this obedience and then from that you have a duty as a christian to do other responsibilities but even in the new testament jesus talks about the responsibility that we have to give the tenth back to god the first fruit of what comes in our house i personally tithe off of the gross i feel that's what i feel is the right thing to do that's what i feel con convicted to do yeah but i also feel like also just it's there's so much in scripture when dave ramsey preached he said was that there's over 2300 scriptures in the bible talking about money and giving and all these different concepts and i would challenge you we've given you a few write them down go back read them for yourself and do your own research because i think it's also important to know what does our bible say about this and so that's also one of the things that we want to hand you like give you handles for like as a christian it's not just you don't need to always just listen to hey like let me just do this do this we know it works but also like learn spiritually how it like what god says about it what he's promising you through this right know that and believe that and pray through that when you're going through your weekend practicing these things that god commands us to do i think that's so important what you're under underscoring brittany of listening to the holy spirit because i think often i know for for many people i have these conversations where it can feel like finances is something separate to hearing from god hearing from the holy spirit almost like it's a mind thing versus a spirit concept and i think for so many of us tonight as we're joining together having the opportunity to work that muscle of hearing from the holy spirit in the area of our finances when we talk about gross or ned or 10 or more than 10 there's all these pieces at play but i would say the holy spirit will speak to each of us and that's where we would encourage you this also takes time in prayer with god and i know it feels like sometimes well that's the answer to everything is it well in this case i think it is hearing from god finding those areas where you might feel a sense of conviction about amounts that kind of thing i think though what god would want us to avoid doing is making it something really legalistic and i think sometimes i even see comments going in the chat we can put it in this place of like god is trying to catch us doing something wrong and truly there is conviction that comes we talk about the holy spirit but condemnation and feeling like um guilt and feeling like you're worthless or you failed and god can't forgive you all that stuff is not real and brit i think what you're saying is so important of we have to listen to the holy spirit because what the holy spirit will do is convict really softly and and give you direction on is it gross or net what does that look like for you a lot of questions that are floating through the chat right now i think listening to the holy spirit for wisdom and if that sounds like weird or hocus pocus to you maybe that's not common language that you use it's really letting that sense of god speak to you about what is your next step look like in your finances too and i you know tithing isn't like a magic trick yeah yeah where it's like you know in malachi brit i always think of this when i read that verse like it says you know do this and see if i don't do this yeah that's right you know and i think a lot of people think like okay well then if i give maybe i'll get double that in return it's really not like a like a debit machine or an atm machine where you put it you know you put in some some numbers and you get some more money out really what i just believe about that verse in malachi is like when you begin to place god first not even just in the area of your finances that's right but especially in the area and i think it focuses on the finances because those can really grip you that has that has a lot of hold on who you are and what you i mean what dave ramsey said is more money just makes you more of who you are you know so if you're generous with a little you're gonna be generous with a lot that's good if you're angry with a little you're going to be even more angry with a lot and but trusting god with that unleashes this blessing from god yeah that's right that comes on your life maybe not in the form of more finances that come in but blessings that you won't even understand how to make like control them blessings on your family these generational curses that we were talking about um all of the different areas of your life your kids learning and just understanding what that looks like in your life the peace that comes from knowing like okay god i am placing you first in in this area of my life and so it's not this like okay i'll do that and see what it's really just learning to trust god in all areas of your life and this is such an important one if you can get this one right amen oh man you're off to such a good start and and i love this being the focus because it's a very difficult place to place god first i think a lot of people say i get up and i read my bible and everything i i jump on i joined church every single week well are you placing god first in here i'm working on it right now you know what i mean because it's tough yeah but the blessing that god pours on us when we do that is pretty amazing and my prayer for you our prayer for you is that you get to experience that we haven't made it it's not like we're like all the way there and it's like you know we don't we don't struggle at all but i've personally experienced some of that blessing in my life and and man i i want everybody to be able to to experience that same blessing so good it's such a pertinent time to even as you talk about that just unleashing the blessing and it's not always something tangible it may be peace there's so much happening you watch the news for 10 minutes you're like inflation all these things that are happening and i think we get the power to say what do we truly believe about what god says about us about our about him providing for us the peace that we have access to and so if nothing else tonight even re-centering our attention and focus around the fact that we get to choose how we respond and what we perceive about not just our finances but about how god cares for us and is so aware and attentive to us you know i love it i love it so much in the chat um i see so much good conversation happening yes thank you guys all for being here um we are going to continue this conversation next week and so we want to see you back here same time same place but a couple of reminders um come back next week with your budget um we are going to have some fun giveaways for those of you guys and actually let's give away a couple more things i know we still have some stuff here we have some fun prizes and i see you guys participating we appreciate it um and so for those of you that got something from tonight i want to see um at the end of the video they said what is your one minute takeaway go ahead and start putting your one-minute takeaways in the chat and we're gonna pick a couple of you we have a couple more envelope systems that we want to give away okay and you know we also have some big show stoppers dave ramsey has some really great resources and he has this thing called a starter pack yes there's two of them that we have i conveniently have it right here but it's some of his best resources to get you started in budgeting and all the things that you will need to do to be successful amazing the financial peace process so we're going to give away some envelope systems we're going to give away a couple of these tonight too and so um let's see who we have in the chat that we want to just bless um and we're just so grateful that you've been here tonight we're excited to be on this journey with you um so we have um okay karen you're working on your budget right now karen yeah i love it um i'm gonna send you a starter pack to help you with that that's the that's the big gift that's the biggest gift she's working on right now and i respect that that's immediate action karen you got an email.org [Music] the starter pack bunch of envelopes so okay um i saw somebody who said if you scroll down a little bit more i saw somebody who said budget's already done oh um it's down even further maybe so many people love it yeah we probably missed them if that was you sunday [Laughter] we have nothing else to give away dale you said discipline dale brown discipline to manage finances for a lifetime we're going to send you an envelope system i love that i love it you're talking for the long game and i respect that uh maria milo says tracking expenses greater budget and the importance of tithing these are the things you took away we're gonna send you one of these um what are they called again envelopes envelope system and okay so if you don't know what this is because people are like you're giving away all these things what is this this is um in the video dave ramsey talks about um well his wife or his daughter rachel cruz i'm like going through the whole lineup um they talk about the envelope system and using cash that's right and so this helps you with your budget and this helps you stay on crackers whatever it is that you like josh and so there's like a whole booklet in here to help you with everything keep your expenses what you're spending money on make sure you're good to go yeah it's awesome and it's like super practical helpful so if you're figuring this out trying to do the cash system trying to do your budget it's incredible to help you with that yeah it can be so good for things where you tend to overspend yes so eating out would be a great example do that in cash and then when you go out to eat you only use your eating cash i can't pay 5000 [Applause] okay before we give away just a couple more so many people this entire night have been saying where do we get the videos where do we get these videos videos videos videos you keep referencing videos where do we get them so listen up because we're going to say it and then you're going to keep asking it so we're going to say it and then you're going to be like but where do i get the videos so we're going to post it in the chat we we have done this already but we'll post it in the chat but you really have to sign up yeah to get access to these videos britt what do they do they literally just follow the prompts so um whenever you click the link that we're dropping in the chat right now just follow the prompts answer the questions and you're going to get a link from that and you literally just follow the prompts and you're going to get access to a website depending on if you are international or here in the united states you're going to get a link that's going to take you so you can also whenever this video is over just scroll down in the comments the description below and you can also access the link from there so whichever one you want to do just make sure that you see it but you'll see it right there um my friend christine um thomaso she's got the blue wrench by her name she actually posted the exact link you can click on those directly follow the prompts and you'll get access to everything that you need from budgeting tools so you don't just have to like figure this out from thin air there's even like suggested like ways to budget so if you're like i don't even know how to start it's like well at least here's a guide skeletons to help get you started it's not exact these are not things that you have to do it's just suggested in a framework to get you started and access for a whole year i don't know if we said that tonight but as you sign up and you register you'll get access to all of those resources for for a full year free access and so um and these videos so just so you know some of you have also been asking throughout the night hey i logged on halfway through this is this going to be available somewhere um yes is the answer so it's gonna stay up here right on elevation plus okay so the channel that you're on right now elevation plus right here on youtube um some of you said hey my husband wasn't able to be here tonight i'd love him to watch this this will be posted right on this channel and then every week for the next six weeks we'll be right here at 8 00 pm eastern time yep um uh to do the same thing to have a conversation with you yeah that's right um karen i was gonna say karen needs karen needs envelopes let's hook her up she said i could really use an envelope i'm an overspender we are going to bless you cheers i'm in your way this is what we're here for we want to help you honestly um and so yeah um cassie's shouting out the chat hoes the childhoods are amazing tonight hosts are on point thank you guys that's right so um homework remember come back next week with your budget do a budget and then go ahead sign up if you haven't yet and make sure that you watch video number two before you come because what we're going to do here is break that video down talk about it more in depth okay so we love you guys we are so grateful that you're here we're going to have fun giveaways every week we're going to talk about scripture we're going to break these down practically every week so make sure you join us again and i'm danny i would love it if you would close us out with the blessing yeah i would love to do that yeah let's pray together i know we've seen so many people sharing in the chat tonight too about things you're believing god for and claiming our teams we're gonna make sure we're covering those things in prayer too but let's take a second to do that now father god we just say thank you lord thank you for these few moments together tonight god and we pray for everyone lord that's been participating tonight i pray for the person that tonight maybe has been in a pattern of generosity for years and that maybe a lot of this isn't new to them god but that maybe you'll challenge them in a specific and fresh way god to continue to give and be generous lord and trust you in that way but i also pray lord for the person that maybe hasn't ever taken a step in beginning a process lord and looking at how they spend their money or creating a budget i pray lord just grace over them in jesus name lord that there would be no shame no guilt lord no condemnation but that they would finish tonight these moments lord that they would be full of hope and expectation lord for the freedom that they will find in you and so god we just ask you to help us through this process as all of us spend these weeks together lord that you would speak that we would be able to hear you god and we just say thank you lord thank you that you are our provider god and that you care for us and you are so attentive to what we need we say thank you lord we bless you in jesus name amen amen amen and amen thank you guys so much for being here tonight we cannot wait to see you next week and we can't wait to break down these budgets and talk about baby step number two see you back here next week see you next time same place bye guys [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Elevation+

Views: 30,084

Keywords: elevation church, dave ramsey, steven furtick, financial peace university, fpu experience, personal finance, ramsey solutions, financial peace, budget, money, getting out of debt, loan debt, credit card debt, relationships, managing money, generosity, giving, Ramsey+, debt, saving, investing, budgeting, emergency fund, baby step one, debt management, emergency planning, cash envelopes, conversations, discussion, community, giving to god, deep is doing, stewardship, financial literacy

Id: dIIpzXsLlFU

Length: 52min 25sec (3145 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 30 2022