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My name is Christina July, and I make personal finance content. I talk about finances from my own personal perspective.
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I share my thoughts, I share my processes, and I also share my numbers every now and then because why not?
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But today's video is a bit chilled, the weather is just all over the place.
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So, I want to have like a conversation between friends.
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I want to share my mind with you, but I still want to talk about money, right?
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And I want to talk about managing your money wisely and managing it in a way that honors the Lord.
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Because in today's world, financial instability is a real concern for a lot of us.
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We don't know what's going on, we don't even know what's about to happen, we don't know what to expect.
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And so, as believers, our confidence cannot be found in the economy because no, our confidence should rather be found in something that's more stable, that's never changing, like odd or like God's principles.
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Now, I'm in IT, right? I'm a business analyst, and we talk a lot about automation in our space.
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Automation is creating systems and software that uses instructions to create like a repetitive process or repeated process.
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So, now with that in mind, biblically speaking, principles are God's automation, right?
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That the outcome of certain actions has already been programmed into the action, and that is why I'm saying that for us as believers, instead of having confidence in the economy, we have confidence in this automation that the Lord has set up for us.
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That if we align ourselves with it, there are guaranteed outcomes at the end for us, right?
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Now, you would actually be amazed at the number of financial lessons that you can learn from the Bible, right?
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And one common principle that's in the Bible is in the book of Luke. And it says, give and you will receive.
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And your gift will return back to you in full, pressed down, shaken together, overflowing, running over, poured onto your lap.
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Right. And the Bible goes on to say that the amount that you give will determine the amount that you get back.
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And this extends far beyond just money. The idea here or the lesson is rather to give your need.
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And I learned this quite recently. If you never want to like shoes, give away shoes.
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If you never want to like food, give food.
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If you never want to lack money, then you give money. And it sounds counterintuitive, right?
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That in order to give, you have to, I mean, in order to receive, you have to give.
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Because we kind of view giving as like a loss, like a minus.
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But there's a story in the Bible, in the book of 1 Kings, chapter 17.
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And the story is of a prophet. His name is Elijah. And this widow who is from Zarephath.
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Now, I'm just going to tell you guys the story in short.
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The Lord says to Elijah the prophet that go to the widow in Zarephath.
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She will give you food to eat. He goes to the woman and he asks for water and he asks for bread.
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And the woman is like, I ain't got no food. I don't have bread for you. And she says, as you see me, I am gathering.
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I'm gathering wood so I can go make fire.
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So I can use the handful of flour that I have left and a little bit of oil that I have left to make bread.
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And I'm going to take the bread and I'm going to chow it with my son. And then after that, we're going to die.
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Like she literally says, we are going to eat and die because that's all that they have left.
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Now, the prophet says to her, do exactly that which you are planning on doing.
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Like, gather the wood and make the fire and make the bread, but give me the bread to charm.
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Now, the woman actually does that, and then the word of the Lord comes to her to say, which is like a miracle, right?
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To say that the jar of flour that she had the little bit of flour in and the jar of oil that had the olive oil, it will never run dry.
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Like, she will never lack those things that she gave.
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Literally, the Lord promises her that those things that you gave, you will never lack those things until there is rain in the land.
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Now, if we just bring it home a little bit, if you have a hundred rands in your wallet, and let's say,
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for instance, you need to pay for like your child's school fees at the end of the month, and you don't have the money, you just don't have the money according to this principle.
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The best thing that you can do with that 100 rands is to give it away.
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Now, this would require faith, and you can obviously do whatever you want to do with your money because it's your money.
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But the thing is, if you step outside of this specific principle, then you cannot really expect the outcomes that come with the principle because you are not aligned with the instruction of the principle.
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It says give and you will receive.
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If you don't give, you can't necessarily expect to receive because it's automation, right?
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So, another cool thing about principles and biblical principles is that they work for literally everyone, even if you don't believe in God, don't believe in the Bible, because it's automated, it's a principle, it's gonna work even for you who is not a believer.
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Now, some misconceptions that I want to talk about next around prosperity, right?
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Which has often led people to like the gimmicks that we see in church and the greed and the guilt.
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Because some people will say that if you are really blessed, then you must be rich.
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And then you also have other people who teach poverty like it's a sign of holiness.
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But the thing is, the Bible doesn't teach either of those two extremes. Like the Bible does not teach none of that.
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To equate being blessed with money is shallow because you can be blessed in many other ways.
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The Bible actually specifies sometimes when it's talking about how a person is blessed.
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Like it would say Abraham was blessed in cattle and silver and gold. That is what he was blessed in.
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Solomon was blessed in wisdom, riches, and honor. That's what he was blessed in.
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And so you can be blessed with a variety of things.
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So to equate being blessed with money is also off because you have people who have money, but they're not really blessed.
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Do you know what I mean?
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So even this thing of poverty being equated to holiness also does not make sense because even Jesus Himself had money.
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So let's just not go there. There's nothing cute about poverty. There's nothing that is a representation of Jesus.
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Like this poverty does not represent Jesus in any way, except that he was stripped off of everything.
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So we cannot experience poverty. That's the only time Jesus Christ was poor when he had everything taken from him.
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Like the whole of him, right? So poverty is also not a sign of holiness or godliness or righteousness.
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But now, money and people thinking that money is evil, right? Money is not evil.
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Even the Bible says the love of money and having then your money being like an idol to you.
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What matters about money is how you use it because money is a tool, right?
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And just like any other tool in a toolbox, number one, it's there to accomplish a specific task, right?
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You put it in there because you need it for something.
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And if you don't need it, chances are you're not going to have it. You know what I mean?
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So it being a tool, it's there to accomplish a specific task.
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And it will not hold value beyond its ability. To facilitate actions towards that goal, right?
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I hope it makes sense. Like your screwdriver, it's there to just do one thing.
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And if you're going to use your screwdriver to dry your hair, then it doesn't have value because that's not what it's made for.
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You know what I mean? And again, like any other tool in your toolbox, it makes sense that you know how to use it.
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You know, so the screwdriver thing again, you, why do you have a screwdriver in your toolbox if you don't need it?
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And why do you have a screwdriver in your toolbox if you don't even know how to use it?
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And then if you go back now to money, why should God give you billions if you don't need them?
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And why should God give you billions if you don't even know how to use, like use them?
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You don't know how to manage your money. So that's probably why you don't have it.
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That's probably why you are in debt because you don't know how to manage it.
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And why you probably don't even need it. Like what you are trying to do in life does not need billions.
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You probably just need half a million to make it and that's it. And you have enough. You are fine.
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And then you have people with big visions out there that really require billions.
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Like I'm trying to save the world and end world hunger.
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And that is probably going to be the reason why God gives you those millions because you need them for what you want to do.
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And also you're going to have to know how to use it. So true financial fruitfulness is not in the chasing of wealth.
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It's about also knowing how to use what God has given us wisely.
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The Bible says that you need to honor the Lord with your wealth and honor the Lord with your first fruits and honor the Lord with your crops. Right.
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So, it means that we need to be able to recognize that everything that we have comes from God, and we need to be able to use it responsibly and also bless other people through generosity, right?
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So, the Bible teaches that generosity isn't just about giving more and giving more and giving more, it's about reflecting God's heart, right?
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And it will also shift your mindset from lack to abundance.
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There's a scripture that I want to read because when the year started, I decided that I was sort of like led to start a Bible study group.
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We read the Bible every single day.
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We're not religious about it, but we're trying to build the habit of carving out time every single day for the Lord to spend with the Lord.
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And the aim is to have read the whole Bible in 2025.
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So, by the end of 2025, I need to be able to say, I know every single thing that's in the Bible, I've read it, right?
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Maybe I don't remember it, but I've read it.
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So, the last two days of February, um, we read two chapters of Ruth each day.
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