If you are having a “lack attack” this series is for you. In part 2 of How to Attack Lack, Ashley and Carlie explain that lack is not God’s will and how it can limit us from walking out the life God intended for us. You will be encouraged to keep your mind stayed on the Lord and inspired to help others with the abundant finances God has provided.
Transcription
Announcer: Why live a normal life when you could be living the Abundant Life? Welcome to the Abundant Life Program with Ashley and Carlie Terradez.
Ashley: Hello, and welcome to Abundant Life. My name is Ashley Terradez and this is my wife, Carlie and we’re so glad you’ve joined us today. We’ve got a great program for you today. We’re talking about how to attack lack. How to attack lack in your life, how to attack poverty in your life. If there’s any area of your life where you haven’t got enough, you’re experiencing lack, praise God. God wants you to experience abundance –
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: God wants you to have the best. And we’re talking about things that we can do to attack that lack.
Carlie: So, if you’ve having a lack attack, this is just for you.
Ashley: Lack attack. Lack attack, lack attack. So, basically what we looked at last time, if you if you missed last time, we looked at is God’s will for us to prosper financially –
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: And 2 Corinthians 8:9, 2 Corinthians 8:9 says that… Let me read that to you “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes, for your sakes, for our sakes, He became poor that we through his poverty might become rich.” And we established that’s talking about financial riches, that’s talking about provision and you know what? Jesus took on poverty, just like he took on sin and sickness at the cross, defeated it and now it’s the great exchange. When you receive Jesus, you receive his healing –
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: You receive his righteousness and you receive his provision, his prosperity.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: Praise God. We also looked at 2 Corinthians 9:8. So, that was 2 Corinthians 8:9, the 2 Corinthians 9:8 said that “And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you always having all sufficiency in all things may have an abundance for every good work.” Again, a financial verse. 2 Corinthians chapters eight and chapters nine is all talking about finances. Paul’s talking about money, about provision, about offerings. And right here, he says, you know what God’s will for you is to have sufficiency in your own life –
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: So your own needs are met. Philippians 4:19 talks about how he’s going to supply all our needs according to his riches. So our needs are to be met and then we’ll have an abundance to help others, we’ll have an abundance for every good work, we’ll have an abundance to give. So, it’s God’s will for us to prosper, it is God’s will to have all sufficiency in all things and it’s God’s will for us to have an abundance for every good work. Praise God. And, it’s not God’s will for us to experience lack and poverty.
Carlie: Hallelujah.
Ashley: Amen. And we established last time that lack and poverty, when it’s described in the Bible, is always looked at as a curse, is always described as a curse, whereas provision and abundance is always described as a blessing. And you can go into Deuteronomy 28 and read that whole chapter. And you’ll find the first 14 verses he’s talking about the blessings of God. And, that includes provision, that includes prosperity –
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: That includes abundance and the verses from 15 all the way through to 68 is talking about the curses. And the curse is described as not having enough. It’s talking about you sow seeds in the field, you don’t receive any harvest or you grow a vineyard, you plant a vineyard and don’t receive any of the grapes.
Carlie: There’s no fruits to your labor.
Ashley: No fruits to your labor and things like that.
Carlie: But we also mentioned that Jesus, praise God, has delivered us, redeemed us from the curse of the law.
Ashley: Amen. Galatians 3:13, Jesus redeemed us from the curse of the law. And now there’s no curse on us anymore, praise God, all those curses are gone.
Carlie: Just the blessings apply.
Ashley: Only the blessings apply.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: What we talked about is even though, hopefully your a believer and you believe the truth, you believe that God wants you healed, god wants you whole and God also wants you to be provided for, God wants you prosperous. You believe those things, the believer, but here’s what we looked at. Sometimes we don’t experience those things in our daily lives.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: So what happens when we don’t experience those things in our daily lives?
Carlie: That’s a great question because the word of God is still true.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: But why isn’t the word of God working in our daily life sometimes?
Ashley: Amen. So, that’s one of the things we were looking at, in particularly in finances. So we’re looking at, if this is a financial series, series, series. It’s a serious series.
Carlie: Serious series.
Ashley: It’s not always going to be serious, though. We’ve asked –
Carlie: Not with us. It’s highly unlikely.
Ashley: The joy of the Lord’s our strength. Praise God.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: So we must be very strong.
Carlie: There you go.
Ashley: But we’re looking at finances and you know what? There’s a lot of times, and even in our own lives, we said that we feel like we may have left in this area, but we certainly haven’t arrived. And there’s times in our life we still experience some lacking areas. And there’s times it was talking about, we’d love to be able to give more and help more people or do more. So the point is this is that if you’re experiencing lack or poverty, that’s not God’s will. And if you’re experiencing that day-to-day, then we want to find out how we can attack that and how we can get rid of that lack in our day-to-day life.
Carlie: And that’s great you mentioned that because lack and poverty for some people, this isn’t just like, “Oh, I don’t have enough money to eat out tonight.” No, we’re talking about like a chronic condition.
Ashley: Right.
Carlie: You know, like they’ve always been poor, they’ve come from a poverty household where there just wasn’t enough. Some people, they don’t even have the basic necessities of life covered, they don’t have a safe place to live, they don’t have enough food to eat. Especially people where lack has been a chronic condition in their life, it might be hard for them even to imagine ever breaking through from that.
Ashley: Right, yeah.
Carlie: So, this could be like, life-changing for people.
Ashley: Amen. It really can be. And, you talked about lack of is a mindset –
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: But also real lack, real poverty, if you’d like, you’re talking about not even having enough to eat. We’ve been to South America, Central America, Africa, Asia, and I’ve seen firsthand poverty to the point where it’s literally killing people. And that’s why I hate poverty now. That’s why –
Carlie: Even here in America, there’s plenty of people that are living below the poverty line.
Ashley: Yeah.
Carlie: Plenty of people.
Ashley: I have to say this, in America, if you’ve never, if you’ve never left America, then I would encourage you to go on a mission trip, go overseas because in America, there’s still extreme poverty –
Carlie: It’s poverty at a different level.
Ashley: But it’s poverty at a different levels. Lack and poverty in a third world developing nation, I’m not sure what the political term is now, is it third world or developing, whatever it is, poverty in some of those nations, we’re talking about literally poverty to death, poverty that’s causing people to die. And that’s why I hate poverty –
Carlie: And there is no help. There is no government structure.
Ashley: That’s right. And people are dying because they haven’t got enough food to eat and they’re dying because they haven’t got the resources to live. And to me, that’s why I hate poverty. That’s why I hate lack. That’s why lack and poverty is evil.
Carlie: They kill, ultimately.
Ashley: It does kill. And lack and poverty is evil. And that’s why it’s been taken to the cross. Jesus took that poverty to the cross, Jesus took lack to the cross.
Carlie: So, we shouldn’t tolerate it, right?
Ashley: We shouldn’t tolerate it. And if you tolerate it in your life, in your everyday life, then that’s why it’s totally… In fact, I heard this the other day. I was reading a book on this and the author mentioned this it way and I never thought about it this way before. They said the reason why the American people, and they even said Christians, Christians will think lack’s okay, we’ll tolerate some lack, is because, and this is pretty profound. They said, if you believe that there’s not enough resources. If you believe that, you know what –
Carlie: There’s a shortage.
Ashley: There’s a shortage and lack is just part of life, then it makes it easier to hear about people that are literally starving. But, if you get a revelation of the truth, and the truth is this, there is enough resources for the whole world two or three times. There’s enough money and resources and food to feed everyone for everyone to have enough and extra.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: There’s enough for everyone to have enough and extra. If you truly believe that, then you have other nations, or even your neighbors, who haven’t got enough and are starving. And it’s like, as a human race, if we really believed that there was plenty of food, just look at food for now, there was enough food to cover the world three times over, then how could we sit back and watch people’s starve?
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: We have to believe that lack is part of life. We have to believe there’s a lack, there’s not quite enough, there’s, there’s not enough resources, not enough food. That way we can actually live with people that are starving in other countries.
Carlie: right. And I think as Christians, we’ve been duped.
Ashley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carlie: We’ve been duped into thinking that lack is somehow holy even.
Ashley: Right.
Carlie: Taking a vow of poverty or just being passive, just thinking it’s normal, just tolerating it, just learning to live with it. Your ancestors will poor, your parents are poor, your poor, your kids are probably going to be poor and just thinking, Well, there’s no way out of it or not understanding that we are empowered. We have authority. The word of God has a different plan for us than maybe what we’re experiencing.
Ashley: Amen.
Carlie: That might be the first time that people have ever heard that.
Ashley: And I’ve seen this work firsthand. I mean, I’ve been into prisons, I’ve preached in prisons. I’ve seen people in prisons prosper in prisons –
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: Where there is no money and things. I’ve seen people in third world nations prosper when they said it’s impossible for you to prosper in this place. And again, it’s all relative. I know a friend of mine, he drilled a well in a third world nation and now that church there is become the most prosperous, it’s the center of town basically –
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: And helping hundreds of people, thousands of people with clean water and starting businesses and micro loans and things that, and that’s in a third world nation. So this works, praise God, this basically prosperity and God’s provision will work wherever you are –
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: Wherever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever your upbringing, it’s God’s will for you. And it works. God’s a loving father, He loves you. And he doesn’t want any of us to go without. He doesn’t want any of us, certainly not to go without food, but He doesn’t want any of us to go without and not be able to help people and not be able to have an abundance.
Carlie: Amen. The word of God will work for anyone who believes it.
Ashley: Amen. So, lack is not of God. Lack is evil and provision is good. Provision is good. You can study that out all the way through the Bible. And that’s the truth. So, what I want to look at today is I want to look at what lack does in your life. If you start to see what lack or what poverty does in your life, then you’ll start to get hatred for it, as well. And I believe we want to get to the point where we don’t want to tolerate lack and poverty in our lives.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: So spiritually speaking, if you’re a believer today, you’ve already got Jesus’ prosperity, Jesus’ provision on the inside of you. Just like you’ve got his healing, just like you’ve got his righteousness, you’re already prosperous in your spirit. You’re already prosperous, you already got what you need on the inside of you.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: But seeing it day to day is what you’re going to be looking at. And when you see what lack or tolerating lack in your life can do, then you’ll realize how important it is to get rid of it. So, the first thing I look at is when you have a lack or poverty in your life, it limits your choices. So, lack or poverty, we’re talking particularly about finances, having a financial lack or financial poverty, limits your choices.
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: And there’s no getting away from it. Your choices are limited.
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: Proverbs 6:11. This is Proverbs 6:11. Let me read this, find this in my Bible, Proverbs 6:11. Proverbs, there’s so much to talk about lack and poverty and it’s powerful. But Proverbs 6 “Poverty can come upon you like a prowler, and your need like an armed man.” If you started this out things, the amplified says your poverty will restrict you like an armed man.
So, imagine an armed robber. If someone comes up to you with a gun and says “Give me your money,” You’re basically limited in what you can do.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: I mean, he has control over you and you’re limited in your choices. And that’s one of the ways of describing it there that when we have lack and poverty, we’re limited. When we was first married, we didn’t have very much money at all. I was a full-time youth pastor youth leader, Carlie was volunteering at Christian coffee house. And we had next to nothing. I tell people we didn’t have enough money to pay attention. It was that bad. But what we didn’t do, we didn’t go into debt, we didn’t go into any consumer debt and we didn’t stop giving. We still gave, but we went without. And there was times we wanted to do things and we weren’t able to do things because we didn’t have the money or the resources to do them. So, it limited our choices, and it really can limit what you can do.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: It can limit how much you can give, it limits you how much you can help people, it limits you in what what you can wear, what you, what you can eat, what you can drive.
Carlie: It limits you on what opportunities you can take up, as well. Even if opportunities come your way, if you have a financial lack, oftentimes people are not in a position that they can explore those opportunities. If they want to start a business, if they want to access education, if they want to access healthcare. I mean, lack is limiting.
Ashley: It is. It limits your choices. And again, we’re not, we’re not saying we’ve done everything right, but by keeping our overheads low and not tolerating lack or poverty in our life, when we felt God called us to start our own ministry, we was able to start our own ministry without taking a salary from that ministry. We was able to do things like that because we made those decisions. You know, we immigrated from England in 2008. We moved our whole family, our three kids, that’s five of us over from England to America, very expensive process, right?
Carlie: Yes it is.
Ashley: And we couldn’t have done that if we hadn’t of made some choices and had some abundance in our life to be able to do that. So, there’s things like that. I know friends, this is really sad, friends that want to maybe go to Bible school. You know, they want to go to Bible college, or maybe they want to further their career in a regular college in some skills or certain opportunity, or they want to take on something. And they can’t because the job they’re in only just about pays the bills and they haven’t got any extra, they haven’t got any wiggle room and they can’t give this up to do something.
Carlie: Right. And I think, sometimes, especially in Western culture, people are living beyond their means.
Ashley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carlie: They may have a fairly decent paying job, they’ve made choices that then cause a lack. And most of that’s because of debt. We’ve kind of lived off the here and now, and we’ve fed our flesh and gone with our impulses and desires and bought that bigger car or bought that bigger house and live to the ends of our means to the point where our income without all over those added debts and responsibilities would have been enough. But, now we’ve actually forced ourselves into a position of lack by taking on all of the debt that we have.
Ashley: Right.
Carlie: So, I think there’s two different camps. People that maybe have lack because they’ve just come from a place where there’s just hasn’t been enough or other people that find themselves in a place of lack, maybe because, and it’s not condemnation, we just need to be real with ourselves, because some of the choices that they’ve made have put them in that spot,
Ashley: Right. And it’s easily done. It’s easily done.
Carlie: Yeah.
Ashley: Again, like Carlie says, this is never any condemnation or anything. We’re just trying to help you receive the promises of God. We’re trying to help you walk in the promises of God and God’s best for you. So the first thing is if you tolerate lack and poverty in your life, it’s going to limit your choices. And again, if you’re there now, if you’re at a place, now you say, actually, that’s exactly where I’m at. I want to serve the Lord. I want to do these things. I want to take on this different job. I want to, whatever it is, but I can’t because I haven’t got the extra money or I haven’t got the wiggle room in my budget to actually do that. Then I feel for you. But I’m telling you, you can pray. And I’m going to show you some practical things you can do to get rid of lack in your life –
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: To get rid of poverty in your life.
Carlie: Amen. You don’t have to stay there.
Ashley: Amen. I mean, you don’t have to stay there. Amen. Things are changing for you.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: This is your year. So the second thing is it hinders us from serving the Lord and helping people. When you have lack or poverty in your life, it hinders you from serving the Lord. A great example of this is in Luke 10. Luke 10:33 talks about the good Samaritan, very famous story. If you’ve never read it, it’s a great story. Luke 10 verse 33. And what happens is basically is a guy is beaten, robbers get him these beats. And this is my paraphrase version. And they’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death. This guy gets beaten and robbed and the priest acknowledged him, I think the rabbi knows him, a couple of people ignore him and don’t help him. I forget the details.
Carlie: Did you want me to read it?
Ashley: You can tell me who ignores it, I mean, it’s a long story.
Carlie: Okay. Paraphrase then.
Ashley: Paraphrase. So, some people leave him. But then the Samaritan comes along and he helps him. This Samaritan helps this guy. The guy has been left for dead and the Samaritan, hence the good Samaritan –
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: The Samaritan helps him. And, Margaret Thatcher put it this way, the English prime minister years ago, she said, “If the good Samaritan didn’t have extra money, the good Samaritan wasn’t a prosperous person.” Olin put it this way .The good Samaritan had lack and poverty. He wouldn’t even be in the Bible. He wouldn’t have been able to help this person because he had an animal. If you had an animal then it was because he wasn’t poor, you wasn’t experiencing poverty if you’re an you had an animal. And then put the guy on his animal, he took took him to the inn swiped… I tell people, he swiped his MasterCard and said “Whatever he spends money on, if he gets room service, I’ll pick up the tab, don’t worry. And he helped this person.”
Now, I’m not saying you can’t help people without money. But, I’m saying when you have lack and poverty in your life, it’s very limited how much you can help people and how much you can give to other people and serve other people and help other people.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: So, there’s a limit to what you can do when you have lack. So, it definitely limits your choices in life, it can limit your life choices. Lack can also hinder you from helping people. The third thing I’ve got here is lack can actually hinder you the word of God in your life. And people say, Hang on. How can lack hinder the word of God in my life? Well, the Parable of the Sower is a great example of this.
In the Parable of the Sower, this is Mark 4. In Mark 4, Jesus tells a parable. In fact, Jesus said, this parable is key. If you don’t understand this parable, you’re not going to be able to understand the other parables. So, this is a very important parable. The Parable of the Sower, Mark 4, and Jesus says there’s four types of ground. And, again, paraphrase this story again real quickly. But the sower is God, the seed is the word of God, the ground is our hearts. So the sower, the farmer, if you like, is God the Father, the ground is our hearts and the seed that is sown is the word of God. So what’s happening is here is the farmer comes out, sows the seed and the seed lands on different types of grounds.
So the four different types of grounds are peoples’ four different hearts. So the first ground, it’s stony there’s no root, it’s stony and it gets stolen away right away. The second ground, it goes in the ground and it grows up, but there’s no roots and it withers real quickly. I think is where a lot of the body of Christ live is the third type of ground. And the third type of ground is the seed went in, it took root and it grew, but in verse 19, it talks about how thorns and in Mark 4:19, Jesus explains what those things were. He explains what those thorns are that choked the word of God. And he says they’re the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches and the lust for other things. Those things enter in and choke the word of God.
And in the fourth type of ground didn’t have those hindrances. Didn’t have those thorns in it. And it went on and produced 30 fold, 60 fold, 100 fold fruit.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: So, the third type of ground had something choking the word. And I tell people, if there was something in there in our lives that’s choking the word of God, stopping the word of God producing, stop the word, word of God, bringing fruit in our lives, we want to know what it is, right?
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: And those three things, all three of them can be financially related.
Carlie: And it’s true. I had a survey recently that the financial issues is one of the number one things that destroys marriages –
Ashley: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Carlie: Because if you’ve got a financial –
Ashley: Money, in America, is the number one reason for divorce is financial issues.
Carlie: Right. If you’ve got that constant worry on your mind… You can’t be in fear and faith at the same time, right? So if you’ve got that financial burden, that financial worry of lack, or how am I going to pay my bills, the mortgage is due and I can’t pay it, whatever it is. I can’t feed my children. I mean, that’s constantly playing on your mind and it is choking the word of God. It is it’s vying for your attention.
Ashley: And that leads me on to the fourth point, actually, perfectly.
Carlie: Oh, seamless.
Ashley: To the third point. The cares of this world will actually choke the word of God in your life if that’s always on your mind. And the fourth point is very similar and that is that it really does dominate our thoughts. If you’re experiencing lack, if you haven’t got enough, just think of this. If you’re in a situation where you don’t know how you’re going to pay the rent, you don’t know how you’re going to pay groceries and you just can’t make it or your month is longer than your paycheck and you’re not going to make it financially, that produces worry. That’s on your mind. I’ve been there.
Carlie: And then stress –
Ashley: We’ve been there.
Carlie: Health problems and.
Ashley: Yeah. We’ve been there.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: Right where it splits. It’s dominating your thoughts and it’s, and it produces worry, it produces fear and you’re like, How are we going to do this? And all you can think about are those things. And it can really take your mind off the load and put your mind to worry –
Carlie: It’s quite consuming.
Ashley: It is, it’s consuming. In Luke 12:22, Luke 12:22, Jesus says, “Take no thought.” In the King James version says, Take no thought about what you’re wearing, what you eat and what you know, and basically how you’re going to provide for your needs. Take no thought for those things, because God your Father knows what you have need of. So, we need to get to the place where we realize God wants to take care of our needs. There’s some practical things we need to do, but God wants to take care of our needs. And if we have lack or poverty in our life, and we’re meditating on that and thinking about that all the time, that can really hinder us and that can dominate your thoughts to the point where it takes your mind off the load.
Carlie: Actually in that passage of scripture, this is Luke 12:29. It says, “And do not seek what you should eat, or what you should drink nor have an anxious mind.”
Ashley: That’s good. Have an anxious mind. So, if you’re experiencing lack or poverty, unfortunately that’s going to cause you to have an anxious mind and we’ve been there. And even now, in our ministry, there things. It costs money to run a ministry full-time and we’re traveling around the world, we’re making TV shows, we’re doing things that cost money.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: And if we’re not careful, we can start looking are we going to have enough and things like that. But, if you’ve got lack or you haven’t got lack, don’t be so focused on the finances. Don’t be so focused on those things. Make sure your mind is stayed on the Lord. In fact, Isaiah 26:3, Isaiah 26:3 says “He will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on him.”
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: And if you keep your mind on the Lord and don’t focus on the lack and don’t focus on the poverty, that’s going to really help you. And that’s going to give you peace because when you have lack and poverty in your life, it will try and steal your peace.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: It was trying to steal away, your peace, and that’s not a good thing. So, it can limit your choices, it can hinder you from helping people and serving God, it can choke the word of God and stop it producing fruit in your life, it can dominate your thoughts and steal your peace and take your mind off the load. And the last one look at is it can actually drive you into debt. It can drive you into debt.
Carlie: As a solution for the lack.
Ashley: It can drive you into borrowing money. Because if you have lack and poverty, what are you going to do? What are your options? One of the options is going to borrow the money to not being lack anymore, not have poverty anymore. And that’s pushing you into debt. So Proverbs 6 verse 1 says, if you’ve taken on a debt, give no sleep to your eyes or Proverbs 6 verse 4 says, “Give no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids, deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter-”
Carlie: That’s like a fast sprint right there.
Ashley: “Like a bird from the hand of the Fowler.” And basically I want to tell you, this debt is not sin. If debt was a sin, then God wouldn’t have said to the Israelites, you will lend to many nations and borrow from few. So if debt was a sin, some people teach debts to sin. If debt’s a sin, God would not tell the Israelites to lend to nations and borrow from few. So, I don’t think debt is a sin, but I don’t think debt is God’s best. And I think we have to be very careful when we’re talking about debt and understand people say there’s good debt and bad debt. I think, God’s best is to be debt free. We’re debt free as a family. We own our own house, we own all our cars. We were 100% debt free. So, we don’t have any debt, no credit cards, store cards, mortgages, car payments. I have to list them because some people say I’m debt free.
Carlie: They make an exception.
Ashley: I’m debt free. But I got my student loans. No, we’re debt free a hundred percent. And that’s glory to God, god did that for us. But I’m saying, going into debt, you’ve got to be careful. In Proverbs 22:7, Proverbs 22:7, it says “The borrower is servant to the lender.” And that’s the truth. Anytime you borrow money, you become that person’s servant.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: And I think that’s a bit extreme, Ashley. Well, it’s true. If you borrow money from the bank, they can tell you, I want that note paid back. If you don’t pay that note, they’re going to come and take it from somewhere else or they can even take your house from you or your car from you.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: You’re not the ruler in that situation, the bank are. And if you borrow money from a person… I would never recommend borrowing money from friends or family. That’s one of the worst things you do because it changes the relationship. One minute you got brother and sister, the next minute you’ve got servant and master and that’s all master and servant. And that’s why things go sour. One of the main reasons for any relationship breakups is financial issues.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: Is things like this. People borrowing from people and things like that. So, trying to overcome lack by going into debt and borrowing the money can be really dangerous. Romans 6:16, this is Romans 6:16 it says, “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves slaves to obey, you are that one’s slaves whom you obey.” Whether it’s the sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness, we know this verses talking mainly about sin and obedience leading to righteousness of sin, leading to death, but it’s can also be applied to whoever you to obey, you’re that one servant obey.
Carlie: Mm
Ashley: So, if you choose to go into debt, just be aware that it changes the relationship. You’ve now become subservient to a master who owes the debt.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: Who’s lent you the money. So, that’s why Proverbs 6 verse 1 and then 4 through 5 talk so much about don’t do it. Get out of debt as quick as you can, don’t go into debt quickly, be aware of going into debt. So again, there may be some people watching today that are in debt, consumer debt, because they’ve had to get debt to be able to get out of lack.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: So they’ve had a lack and they haven’t been able to pay the mortgage, or they haven’t been able to pay the rent or they haven’t been able to pay groceries. They just put on a credit card and they get a debt again. No condemnation. I’m just telling you that’s not God’s best. And when we do that, there’s consequences, there’s natural consequences.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: We ended up paying more because of interest.
Carlie: Right.
Ashley: We ended up creating more stress because now we’ve not just got zero…. It’s one thing to have no money. We’ve lived with no money a lot of times, but then now you’re in negative, however much you’ve borrowed and it’s even more stress. You’ve got to pay the interest and everything else. Lack and poverty can drive you into debt. And you end up becoming a servant to this debt that you’ve got. And then your choices are really limited. If you go into debt, then it amplifies all the other things we looked at. It amplifies the fact that it limits your choices. It hinders you from helping people because you’ve got these debt to maintain.
Carlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ashley: So, I’m telling you lack is not good. There’s just five quick reasons why lack is dangerous and you do not want lack, tolerate lack in your life. You don’t want to tolerate poverty in your life. And I’m telling you in our next show, I’m going to show you how we can get out of lack, how we can attack lack and defeat this and get lack out of our lives so we don’t experience it, lack and poverty in our lives anymore.
Carlie: Don’t live with it anymore.
Ashley: You not want it to start hating lack. Amen. Start hating lack and hating poverty because God’s best view is not to have any lack in your life. Amen.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: Praise God. We’re nearly out of times, so I’m going to pray for you. Father God, I thank you for everyone watching and listening to this show. I thank you, your will for us is to have an abundance. Your will for us is to provide for all of our needs and even have extra to help others. And I thank you all for the people that listening that are in lack and experiencing poverty. I thank you, Lord, you’re going to show them and help them. And I thank you, they’re going to get bold. And I than you they’re going to start to hate that lack and poverty and start really seeking you and they’re going to see breakthrough. I thank you for breakthrough, Lord in people’s lives. I thank you for lack and poverty to be gone in people’s lives, in Jesus name. I thank you for prosperity and abundance to come upon them so they can help more people, praise God, and do more for you. Amen. In Jesus name.
Carlie: Amen.
Ashley: God good?
Carlie: God is good.
Ashley: Praise God. Thanks for watching. We’ll be back real soon with the rest of this series, but until next time don’t just live a normal life, live an abundant life. We’ll see you next time.
Announcer: To order your copy of the book featured in our program, visit our website, terradez.com. Download your free copy of Ashley and Carlie’s teaching notes at our website, terradez.com.
Ashley: Hey, I want to tell you about Carlie’s confession card she wrote. It’s a little card, it’s prescription size, and it has verses about who you are in Christ. This is powerful. I use this regularly. You put your name at the top and then you read it to yourself. It says it “I’m a party waiting to happen.” 1 Peter 1:8. It says “I’ve been sanctified.” 1 Corinthians 6:11 “I’m a child of the king adopted into his family.” It goes on and on. “I lack no good thing. I can do all things through Christ.” You know what? This card is powerful. This will change your life. This will show you who you are in Christ. And I’m saying, if you haven’t got one of these yet go to our website, terradez.com. We’d love to give one of these to you as our gift completely free. So, go to our website, terradez.com and get your confession card today.
Announcer: To receive your free copy of Carlie’s confession card as our gift to you go to terradez.com today.