Align Your Mouth With Your Money

In many ways, your words create your financial future because they flow from your mindset, and your mindset reveals what you think is possible.

No, I’m not a health and wealth preacher, nor do I affirm the name it and claim it / blab it and grab it theologies that promise Christians Audis and favor with God and money if they claim certain Scriptures.

However, when my wife and I were climbing out of a pile of debt early on in our marriage, we learned that there is significant power in the ways in which we talked about finances. For instance, “No” is a powerful word. Like, “No, we’re not going to go out with everyone tonight” because we were choosing to save money to pay off debt. It’s not because we could not afford to go out. In fact, because of credit, you can usually afford just about anything you want, but you’ll pay for it later. We learned to say, “We’re choosing not to afford to go out right now.” Notice the turn of phrase. We put ourselves in control of our financial choices, rather than stating, “We can’t afford to go out right now,” which is a statement about what we do not have rather than a statement about our intentional decisions. One statement puts us in charge of our finances; the other puts our finances in charge of us.

The Scriptures are clear—money serves us, and not the other way around. Sure, maybe you really cannot afford it, but rather than talking about your financial decisions from the perspective of what you cannot do, consider how you might talk about your situation from the perspective of a person who is seeking to meet a goal, rather than one who cannot do something. This week, watch your words when it comes to money. Pay attention to whether or not your words are leading you toward your desired future, or if they are statements that move you farther from your goal, whether that goal is to get out of debt, save, go on a trip, or simply to have more financial confidence.

For more financial guidance check out Tommy’s new book “The Seven Money Types: Discover how God Wired you to Handle Money”