Creamer column – Trusting the Lord

Published 12:00 am Wednesday, December 2, 2009

I went to get the mail after a long day at work only to discover that my wife and I had received our 401K statements. I was not very excited to open that particular piece of mail. As I had imagined, my 401K had declined. I am sure that I am not the only one with such misfortunes. My wife opened her statement to discover that hers had increased in value. In this economy, hers had grown, not by much, but it had grown.
I have my 401K spread out while my wife has hers in conservative growth. She has talked about diversifying, but I am glad she never got around to doing it. I’ve watched over the last couple of years and we normally both end up with about the same growth by the end of the year. I have a strong suspicion she is going to outperform me this year.
I had some money in a CD that came due early in the year. I decided that I might be able to make it grow quicker on my own and had planned to invest it in the stock market. I’m glad now that I never got around to doing that. Granted, it’s not growing very much where I have it, but at least it isn’t decreasing in value.
I would hate to have large investments in the stock market right now. Things are crazy with such wild declines and then explosive growth. I would hate to be a stock broker in this market. I really feel for people who have their retirement money invested in the stock market. It must be awful to have worked your whole life and chosen your investments carefully only to watch it disappear like smoke.
These are very uncertain financial times, not only here, but around the world. Many financial institutions have not invested their wealth wisely. On top of that, they have given their top executives huge bonuses, more than most of us could spend in a lifetime. Add to that the mortgage crisis and the economic slowdown and the result is very uncertain financial times. What can we do?
The answer is based on our foundational beliefs. The first thing we have to do is to put our faith and trust in God. The Bible clearly teaches us that God knows we have basic needs which we must trust him to meet. In other words, he knows we need food, clothing, and shelter. But he wants a relationship with us, more than our demanding things and his meeting our demands.
Second, we have to consider where we are building our treasure. Yes, it is our responsibility to plan for our financial future, but we must also make sure our focus and priorities are right with God. If God challenged you to give some of your money or personal property away, would you have trouble obeying him? Sometimes it’s hard to remember that everything we have is his.
We all struggle to walk out our Christian faith. The struggle becomes more intense as soon as we start talking about money. Jesus taught us to seek his kingdom first, above our financial future. If we spent the same amount to time, energy, and resources building and investing in our eternal home, we would become less concerned about our earthly retirement.
It all boils down to trusting God for both our retirement and our eternal home. It’s difficult to trust a God we can’t see and a bank account we can’t read. I am afraid that many people may be surprised when they arrive in eternity. While they will be joyful that they arrived in heaven, they will be disappointed because they will be poor. We have to make a decision to invest in the investment that will pay eternal dividends.
I know we are living in scary times, but that is all the more reason why we must put our faith and trust in the Lord. If you haven’t made the most important financial decision of your life, I want to encourage you to put your life and eternity into God’s hands. Be wise in how you use your time, talents and money, not only as you plan your retirement, but as you plan for eternity. Invest in things that last forever. No matter what you are facing, whether it’s financial, emotional, spiritual or health issues, the answer to all the stress of these times is putting your faith and trust in the Lord.
Doug Creamer teaches marketing at East Davidson High School. His Web site is www.dougcreamer.com.