So you stand at the door, your hand on the handle, your heart is pounding. Gently you crack the door and immediately feel something pushing against you. “There really is a monster!”, your fear screams. It takes a second, but your rational mind finally kicks in,. “There is NO monster,” you repeat over and over to yourself like a mantra and with courageous effort you swing the closet door open and get pummelled….. by mail.
This is where we begin. You can’t know where you are financially unless you open your mail. It may sound overly simplistic to some of you, but for many people just the paperwork of finances is an overwhelming monster to face. I want to tell you the story of a dear friend who I’ll call Jana. Jana is an extremely intelligent, highly successful, lovely person who was terrified of her mail. She had piles of mail all over her house. Bills, letters, credit cards, all unopened because she just dreaded what they would say. Fear of the unknown had paralyzed her and even though she made a fantastic salary she was barely making it financially and had no idea why.
Thankfully, God started to crack the shell of fear around Jana’s heart, and the day came when she knew that she could no longer neglect the truth. She had to open her mail and break the power of that fear. So Jana recruited a close friend, they put on some fun music and had a mail opening party. And in the midst of the bills, statements, and junk mail, Jana also discovered… money – checks from people, rebate checks, even cash. Along with the serious, there had been alot of the miraculous, and she had missed it all while living in denial and fear.
Does this sound at all familiar to you? Do you dread the mail? Does it sit around your house because you fear the next bill? If this is you, then the good news is, budgeting is your answer. With a budget you will never again have to fear what is in the mail, because you will already know. But, the very first step right now is to open your mail. Yes, you might find pink slips, debt, bills, statements, but you will also find the truth.
As you finally face your fears and begin to see where you really are, you may need to repent. You may need to get honest with yourself about your finances. You may even need an all out miracle. But the good news is, God is still in the miracle working business. He loves honesty, and as you open the door that your fear has held closed, you not only open your heart and finances to the truth, you open the door to Him. As you welcome God into all of that mess of fear, confusion, and denial, you will discover that all along the journey He has been planning surprises for you. God knows your needs, and He has been working for your good all along, but as long as you have seen everything through the dark glasses of fear, you could never see His hand
Throughout this next week, I am going to be giving you a plan for organizing the paperwork of your finances. But the first step today is just to open your mail. Put on some music or a fun movie. Recruit a close friend or your husband or wife to help if you need to. Get a trash can and then just spread out everywhere and make piles of your bills. For some of you, your mail issue may not be opening it, but what to do after you open it. It may just be sitting in an enormous pile on top of your filing cabinet, or desk. This step is for you, too. Get that huge stack and begin to divide it into organized piles. Spread out all over the living room if you need to. At the end, you can stack all your organized piles into one pile. You are ready for the next step… tomorrow.
As we tackle the job of organizing your paperwork this week, expect to find bills, maybe even late notices, expect to find statements, but far more than all of that… expect to be surprised.