Speaker 1: Come on, let's thank God for all our locations. Help
Speaker 1: me Valentine Epham around the world. Where's my Etham. I'm
Speaker 1: on elevation Hirch YouTube. If you want to give me
Speaker 1: a quick shout out to let me know your name
Speaker 1: and your state or country. I would love to know
Speaker 1: where you're joining us from. Of course, all of our
Speaker 1: local locations Elevation, Riverwalk Elevation, Uptown Elevation, Gaston. How many
Speaker 1: of y'all traveled to be in church today? So you
Speaker 1: you did a good thing. Even if it was seventeen
Speaker 1: dollars a gallon, it will be worth it, I promise you.
Speaker 1: All right, y'all, here they come. They're joining us today
Speaker 1: from Guyana, Jamaica, South Africa, Philippines, India, Georgia, Indonesia, Virginia, No,
Speaker 1: that's her name, Virginia from California. That was confusing, Louisiana, Michigan,
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Hey, we're coming to New Jersey. You gotta
Speaker 1: come to New Jersey. Elevation Nights is five weeks away.
Speaker 1: Listen everywhere we're coming. If you have any cousins in
Speaker 1: these cities, all right, because this begins very soon and
Speaker 1: I don't want you I don't want you to miss out.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be in Chicago, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis, Columbus, Ohio, Washington, DC, Redding, Pennsylvania, Newark,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, like I said, and Boston, Massachusetts. Elevation Nights
Speaker 1: dot Com. Some of y'all want to get a ticket
Speaker 1: and be a groupie and just come with us on
Speaker 1: the road. It gets crazy, doesn't it. It's crazy on
Speaker 1: the road, isn't it. Lj am I lying to the
Speaker 1: people of God absolutely saying we're excited. We're excited so
Speaker 1: many good things. You saw the outreach updates, and I
Speaker 1: don't know, look at somebody and say, I don't know
Speaker 1: what you did right, But today you get to hear
Speaker 1: Dave Ramsey. Well, I mean, who could help us more
Speaker 1: at a time like this than Dave Ramsey. Dave, We're
Speaker 1: honored you're here. Man. I already told you this, but
Speaker 1: so they can know. My oldest son came to me
Speaker 1: the other day he said, I found this guy dad
Speaker 1: on YouTube named Dave Ramsey. He thought he discovered Dave Ramsey. No, no,
Speaker 1: but he had been watching him and he was like,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do this all this stuff on the budget.
Speaker 1: Why didn't you teach me all this? Da And I said,
Speaker 1: I taught you all this. This is what I do.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I actually know Dave and he
Speaker 1: was like really, I'm like, yeah, I'm kind of cool.
Speaker 1: I have some cool friends. And you know, the other day,
Speaker 1: I was praying about it and who would God bring
Speaker 1: to help us at a time like this, with so
Speaker 1: much transition, And I feel responsibility to put people in
Speaker 1: front of you who cannot only inspire you for a
Speaker 1: few moments, but can really help you in a way
Speaker 1: that you'll be talking about. My barber was cutting up
Speaker 1: my hair today and he was like, tell Dave, you
Speaker 1: change my life for me. Just tell him. Man. I
Speaker 1: know you pray to hear that a lot, but on
Speaker 1: behalf of all the people that you've helped and all
Speaker 1: of the people who have been set free through what
Speaker 1: God has given you. We honor you and thank you
Speaker 1: for being a pioneer. He and his wife Sharon are here.
Speaker 1: I said, Sharon, do you always travel with Dave? She
Speaker 1: said no, I just wanted to come to elevation. She said.
Speaker 1: The whole team is jealous back home that we're here,
Speaker 1: so let's don't waste any time. I told him, you
Speaker 1: had all day, come on around the world, come best
Speaker 1: selling author Man of God, Dave recing goodness gracious, y'all.
Speaker 1: I feel like a weaner in a steakhouse. So y'all
Speaker 1: know Pastor Craig Rochelle, Pastor Stephen's friend of friend of mine.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking for him next weekend, and I thought I
Speaker 1: must be the oopa lumpa on the ripped pastor tour.
Speaker 1: So Pastor Stephen he he and I started swapping texts
Speaker 1: a few years ago. Sometimes when some of the fire
Speaker 1: is flying, we'll just encourage each other. And sometimes when
Speaker 1: his adrenaline goes down Sunday after noon after preaching bout
Speaker 1: Sunday night, the texts start flying at my house. And
Speaker 1: a few weeks ago I get a text and he says, uh,
Speaker 1: you believe in free speech? I said yeah. He said, good,
Speaker 1: I want you to give one on March twentieth. That
Speaker 1: didn't happen, but it's a great job. So he's overly generous,
Speaker 1: y'all know that. But God told me on Sundays I'm
Speaker 1: not supposed to collect. I collect Monday through Friday, and
Speaker 1: so life's pretty good for me. I'm doing all right,
Speaker 1: I got financial peace, So all right, let's pray all God.
Speaker 1: You know I can do these talks by myself and
Speaker 1: sure are better when you Holy Spirit, this is your
Speaker 1: time in Jesus' name. Amen, y'all have a seat. So
Speaker 1: my wife and I will be married this coming summer
Speaker 1: for forty years. Yeah. I told her if she leaves,
Speaker 1: I'm going with her. When we got married, I don't
Speaker 1: know about y'all, but we were stupid. We had no sense.
Speaker 1: We didn't have anything like pre marriage counseling. We just
Speaker 1: got hitched. We just got married, and nobody told us
Speaker 1: to watch out for this or that, and they were
Speaker 1: just happy to get rid of me and whatever. And
Speaker 1: her dad is scared I was showing up and we
Speaker 1: just got married. So I was a beer drinking, hell
Speaker 1: raising hillbilly. And we've been married about two weeks. We
Speaker 1: moved to Nashville and got our first little apartment. And
Speaker 1: my wife wakes up on Sunday morning and remembers that
Speaker 1: she's a Baptist. This is something she hadn't mentioned before.
Speaker 1: We've been dating for a while. We hadn't talked about it,
Speaker 1: this Jesus stuff. We certainly hadn't talked about her being
Speaker 1: a Baptist, and she said, is Sunday morning? We're going
Speaker 1: to church? And I said, no, we're not. You don't
Speaker 1: go to church on Sunday. You drink beer and watch football.
Speaker 1: What is wrong with you? Well she's real serious about this,
Speaker 1: and of course we're in Nashville, y'all. It's the buckle
Speaker 1: of the Bible belt, right, I mean there's more Baptists
Speaker 1: there than people. And so we have a big fight
Speaker 1: and she's crying and she storms out the door. Well
Speaker 1: it didn't take her long to find her tribe, and
Speaker 1: she starts attending this little Baptist church and these little
Speaker 1: Baptist people praying for her heathen husband. Well this goes
Speaker 1: on every Sunday for about six months, y'all. Be honest
Speaker 1: with you, it wasn't going well. Every Sunday. We had
Speaker 1: big fights. She storms out, crying, and I'm going, what
Speaker 1: did I sign up for? Nobody told me about this?
Speaker 1: And I got in one of these. I was twenty
Speaker 1: two years old and I got in one of these
Speaker 1: multi level things, you know, a thing where you make
Speaker 1: all your friends mad. And one of my beer drinking
Speaker 1: buddies on me, and there's a lot of beer in
Speaker 1: this story. But we got in this thing, and we
Speaker 1: were so dumb, y'all. We would go to happy Hour
Speaker 1: and then go make sales calls and couldn't figure out
Speaker 1: why we couldn't make a sale. This is how dumb
Speaker 1: we were. And oh God, here on his other brother, Darryl.
Speaker 1: And so we we're gonna get a yacht and we're
Speaker 1: gonna be rich, and we're gonna do all this stuff.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're living there twenty two years old.
Speaker 1: We're gonna live the dream and all this, and and uh,
Speaker 1: we were doing pretty good. But we decided to go
Speaker 1: to one of their rallies, one of their sessions down
Speaker 1: in Birmingham, Alabama, which is about two hours south of Nashville.
Speaker 1: So we got in the car and drove to the
Speaker 1: Alabama Theater in downtown Birmingham, which in my mind held
Speaker 1: ten thousand people. I did an event there a while back.
Speaker 1: It holds eight hundred. But you know how when you
Speaker 1: grow up, things shrink. But and so you ever go
Speaker 1: back to your grade school, how it gets smaller. Y'all
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about, right, And so, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: So the uh, anyway, we're up in the top row
Speaker 1: of the very back balcony, me and him, and we're
Speaker 1: taking notes all day long. These speakers are up there
Speaker 1: charging us up of how we're gonna get rich and
Speaker 1: all this stuff and get you a yacht. And there
Speaker 1: was one guy at the end of the day who
Speaker 1: was the dog. He was the one making like four
Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollars a minute or whatever, you know, and
Speaker 1: we wanted to be like him. And so we're kind
Speaker 1: of waiting for the you know, the the apex of
Speaker 1: the day, the crescendo of the day, right, And so
Speaker 1: finally this guy gets up there, and we had written
Speaker 1: down five or six questions that thought if we could
Speaker 1: get the answer to these questions, we'd have a breakthrough.
Speaker 1: Our little business would go boom we go, you know.
Speaker 1: And so he gets up there and it says if
Speaker 1: this guy had our questions as his outline, and we
Speaker 1: already wanted to be him. But by the time he
Speaker 1: finished reading our mail for an hour and we got
Speaker 1: all of our questions answered, if he had told us
Speaker 1: to eat a bag of dirt, we would have he
Speaker 1: owned us, you all know what I'm saying. And he
Speaker 1: was a good speaker too, and he gets to the end.
Speaker 1: He goes, and there's one more thing, and we're like, no,
Speaker 1: there isn't We got our five. He goes, if you
Speaker 1: don't know this man named Jesus, you're going to struggle
Speaker 1: in business because business people who are takers struggle. Business
Speaker 1: people who add value in her givers always win. And
Speaker 1: he said Jesus. He said, Jesus will teach you how
Speaker 1: to do relationships. And if you're gonna be in business,
Speaker 1: you have to learn how to do relationships. And I'm
Speaker 1: looking at my buddy and we're going I have no
Speaker 1: idea what he's talking about. And I asked my buddy,
Speaker 1: I said, you think he's been talking to my wife.
Speaker 1: And so we go back to the little holiday inn
Speaker 1: or whatever it was, and in the night stand we
Speaker 1: find a Bible and it's a Gideon's Bible, right old
Speaker 1: King James, Yeah, Shakespeare and Jesus. The chances of these
Speaker 1: two rednecks figuring this out is zero. We closed it
Speaker 1: blind leading the blind. But we went home. I told
Speaker 1: my wife, I said we're going to church, and she said,
Speaker 1: who are you? And what have you done? My husband?
Speaker 1: And so we went to some of the churches around
Speaker 1: and these folk, they're not having fun. The place looks
Speaker 1: like it was weaned on a pickle. Y'all know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. It's just it's awful. And but we
Speaker 1: went in the back of this little church about three
Speaker 1: four hundred people. It ended up growing to eight thousand
Speaker 1: people later. And you know how you do when you're
Speaker 1: visiting a church. You sit on the back row in
Speaker 1: case it gets weird. You can hit a jack right,
Speaker 1: y'all know what I'm talking about. And so we were
Speaker 1: on the back row. And this is a long time ago,
Speaker 1: y'all mean, it's almost thirty five years ago. And back
Speaker 1: then people didn't raise their hands except in weird churches,
Speaker 1: you know. And we're in there and this woman in
Speaker 1: the choir pops her hand up like she knows the
Speaker 1: answer to some question, and then another one, and then
Speaker 1: they start doing this. I told sheeron, I said, if
Speaker 1: they get snakes out, I'm out of here. And that
Speaker 1: pastor was a man's man. I thought Christians were whishes
Speaker 1: and he was a man, and he stood up. He
Speaker 1: would say stuff like and this is what the Bible says.
Speaker 1: And if you don't agree with that, you're what's known
Speaker 1: is wrong. I like this guy. And this was old
Speaker 1: school church. As I said, there was only about three
Speaker 1: hundred folks in that church when we started there. And
Speaker 1: they'd stand at the back door and you'd go out
Speaker 1: in the line, and the pastor would shake everybody's hand.
Speaker 1: And his wife was a big, squishy woman. She'd give
Speaker 1: you a big grandma hug, you know. And that woman's
Speaker 1: grace flowed off of her when she hugged you and
Speaker 1: looked at you and she said, I love you. Made
Speaker 1: you believe she really did love you, because she did.
Speaker 1: And his strength and grace and mercy led me the Lord,
Speaker 1: and I got baptizem met God there. It changed my
Speaker 1: whole life. I do everything backwards. I left that little
Speaker 1: multi level thing real quickly in the middle. I was
Speaker 1: just in there for about twenty minutes, it feel like.
Speaker 1: And I started buying and selling real estate, and I
Speaker 1: got rich, at least by a kid from antiox standards.
Speaker 1: I started with nothing, and by the time I was
Speaker 1: twenty six, I had a a little over four million
Speaker 1: dollars worth of real estate, a little over a million
Speaker 1: dollar net worth, and I was making two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars a year twenty thousand dollars a month
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two. I don't know where you come from,
Speaker 1: but we called that rich where I grew up. And
Speaker 1: I gotta tell y'all, it was fun. It was really fun.
Speaker 1: I mean sharing what she got. Likes those little sparkly things.
Speaker 1: So we got her some and they weren't big enough,
Speaker 1: and so we got her some more. And y'all, we
Speaker 1: went to Hawaii Rednecks in Hawaii. Oh my, it was
Speaker 1: so nice, y'all. We went back and I had that
Speaker 1: car always wanted. You had that car you always wanted,
Speaker 1: like someday, right, So I got me a Jaguar Man
Speaker 1: because nobody in my ol neighborhood cold spell Jaguar much
Speaker 1: less had one, right, So I got me a Jaguar Man.
Speaker 1: About ninety days, I was a Jaguar, right. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like right, I mean, it's like, oh man, we
Speaker 1: were having fun, y'all. Now, I am not shallow enough
Speaker 1: or theologically deprived enough to think that money is going
Speaker 1: to make you happy. As a matter of fact, I'm
Speaker 1: positive at won't. After teaching God's ways of handling money
Speaker 1: for thirty plus years, now, I do know that money
Speaker 1: will make you more of what you already are. If
Speaker 1: you are depressed and you get money, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: go well if you don't deal with the depression. If
Speaker 1: you got a drug problem and you get money, you
Speaker 1: got a drug problem. I mean, if you got a
Speaker 1: temper and you get money, who tyrant on parade? You
Speaker 1: got a big, gentle, compassionate heart and you get money,
Speaker 1: you can change the world. Whatever you are, and you
Speaker 1: get money, it's going to magnify it. So beware of that.
Speaker 1: It's not going to solve your problems. There's all kinds
Speaker 1: of data points all throughout our culture that prove that.
Speaker 1: You can see people who didn't have it and they
Speaker 1: got money and it messed up their lives. Money makes
Speaker 1: you more of what you already are. And by the way,
Speaker 1: if it makes your people around you more what they
Speaker 1: are too, Like people in your family, like the crazy ones,
Speaker 1: they get crazy, and everybody's got crazy in their family.
Speaker 1: And if you don't think you got crazy in your family,
Speaker 1: that means it's you. So we're cruising along doing really
Speaker 1: good things. Life is good. We're in our twenties. We
Speaker 1: meet Jesus on the way up. I do everything backwards
Speaker 1: and man life. You know, we've got babies and oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, things are good. And I had done some
Speaker 1: stupid things. How many y'all ever done something stupid with money?
Speaker 1: How many of you didn't raise your hand to have
Speaker 1: a problem with lying? We all have, darling. If you've
Speaker 1: made mistakes with money, that makes you over twelve. Only
Speaker 1: I did it was zeros on the end. As I
Speaker 1: told you, I borrowed a ton of money. We had
Speaker 1: a million dollar net worth, but we had three million
Speaker 1: dollars in debt, and we were doing flip this house
Speaker 1: before Chip and Joanna were born. Okay, so for cable
Speaker 1: TV was there to tell you how to do it right.
Speaker 1: And so we were doing flip this house. I had
Speaker 1: a lot of short term notes and the bank got
Speaker 1: sold to another bank, and a guy in another city
Speaker 1: down said, there's a kid twenty six years old. I was,
Speaker 1: that's a million dollars million two to be exact, let's
Speaker 1: limit this relationship, which is banker talk for ruin his life.
Speaker 1: And then they called our notes. And the short version
Speaker 1: of the story is another lender heard we were in trouble,
Speaker 1: because we were in trouble after that, and they called
Speaker 1: our notes and we had two million dollars due in
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty days, all tied up in real estate.
Speaker 1: That started a crash that took two and a half
Speaker 1: years to unfold. That no matter what I did, I
Speaker 1: couldn't stop it. I was always taught, if you have
Speaker 1: a problem, just work harder. Doesn't matter if you dug
Speaker 1: that dig a hole. When you got that level of stupid,
Speaker 1: working harder won't fix it. It was coming down around
Speaker 1: my head. The jangle blocks were crashing. It was a mess.
Speaker 1: I had built a house of cards because I was stupid.
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was stupid. I thought I was smart,
Speaker 1: but I was stupid. Changed my life. I remember standing
Speaker 1: in the shower with it sahat. I could just barely
Speaker 1: stand there, and I would just stand there and cry.
Speaker 1: I was so scared I couldn't breathe. I have a
Speaker 1: toddler and a brand new baby. My marriage is hanging
Speaker 1: on by a thread. Sharing's from the hills Ofpes, Tennessee.
Speaker 1: Y'all frying pan throwing there is an Olympic event. And
Speaker 1: finally we hit bottom file bankruptcy. So I met God
Speaker 1: on the way up. But Church, I'm here to tell
Speaker 1: you I got to know him on the way down.
Speaker 1: I had already been saved, i'd already been baptized, but
Speaker 1: I had an eye surrender all moment. And I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about a Baptist alter call. I'm talking about ever
Speaker 1: been completely on your face and you say I quit,
Speaker 1: I give I surrender. You are now the Lord, you
Speaker 1: are now in charge. I apparently got nothing. I hope
Speaker 1: you never have to get beat up that hard to
Speaker 1: get to that point, because that's a heart decision, and
Speaker 1: you could just make that decision. But I started deciding, Okay,
Speaker 1: if it's in here, it's real, and the rest of
Speaker 1: the stuff I'm not listening to because I listened to
Speaker 1: my finance professor in college who taught me to borrow money,
Speaker 1: and he was broke. What's wrong with that picture? I mean,
Speaker 1: that's like a shop teacher with missing fingers, right, broke
Speaker 1: finance professor. So I'm gonna learn how to live because
Speaker 1: I didn't know how to be a husband. I didn't
Speaker 1: know how to be a daddy. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to be a man. And so I'm you know, marriage,
Speaker 1: so submit yourselves one to another. Oh crud. That means
Speaker 1: I gotta dry dishes. That means I'm gonna serve my
Speaker 1: wife who can find a virtuous wife, for her worth
Speaker 1: is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely
Speaker 1: trusts her, and he will have no lack of game.
Speaker 1: My kids are like, Dad, what's this rod stuff? And
Speaker 1: I'm like, come, everybody, I'll show you only five hundred
Speaker 1: scriptures dealing with money and possessions. Proverbs alone will give
Speaker 1: you a master's degree in finance. It'll show you everything
Speaker 1: you need to know. And it's not just a Bible thumper.
Speaker 1: You can study that with your intellect as well as
Speaker 1: with your spirit, and you'll see it. It's there. So
Speaker 1: we hit bottom and we have the opportunity to start
Speaker 1: again God's ways and we decided, Okay, we're gonna start
Speaker 1: handling money, marriage, leadership, business kids. If I can find
Speaker 1: it in here, this is the way we're doing it.
Speaker 1: I can't always find it. Insurance isn't in here. I
Speaker 1: can't find it, but I still buy insurance. So it's
Speaker 1: not everything's in there, But I'm gonna do it if
Speaker 1: I can. And you know what, that's thirty five years ago, y'all,
Speaker 1: And thirty years ago we went broke and it's worked out.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. As it worked out, Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: It turns out that God's ways of doing things work. Hello,
Speaker 1: they work. So I got a bunch of I got
Speaker 1: we got yesterday. I looked at our thing. We've got
Speaker 1: eleven hundred and sixty two I'm sorry, one thousand and
Speaker 1: sixty two people working on our team right now as
Speaker 1: a Friday, or as of Monday morning. We got thirteen
Speaker 1: more starting Monday morning. And Ramsey Solutions have turned into
Speaker 1: this thing. And it's a process over these years teaching
Speaker 1: people how to handle money. Now, fifty thousand churches have
Speaker 1: taught almost ten million people financial Peace University alone. I mean,
Speaker 1: it blows my mind what God has chosen to do,
Speaker 1: he says. I says in the Bible will speak to
Speaker 1: a donkey apparently, so we're in. I'm in. This is good. So,
Speaker 1: so I got a bunch of youngsters on the team.
Speaker 1: And I love our youngsters. They're brilliant. The average agent
Speaker 1: our team's about twenty seven. People hate this millennial generation.
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you, millennials are amazing. I love the
Speaker 1: millennial generation because there's only two kinds. Awesome and sucks.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just they either will missional driven bright,
Speaker 1: will charge the gates of Hell with a water pistol,
Speaker 1: or they're living in their mother's basement. They ain't leaving.
Speaker 1: You know. It's one of the two. So we we
Speaker 1: got them on our team that are missional driven, smarter
Speaker 1: than me, say words and meetings, I have to stop
Speaker 1: them and go, I'm sorry, but I'm pretty comfortable with
Speaker 1: my own skin on the place, would you just say?
Speaker 1: And so, I mean, they're smart, but sometimes Papa Dave,
Speaker 1: I have to I have to lead. And I was
Speaker 1: coming by one of them and he was doing the
Speaker 1: stuff he was supposed to be doing wrong, and I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, that's not don't do it. Do it
Speaker 1: this way. That's that's not how we do it here
Speaker 1: at Ramsey. This is this is the thing. It's an
Speaker 1: excellence thing. You gotta do it right. And he's like okay.
Speaker 1: And I come back about a week later and he's
Speaker 1: doing it wrong again. I'm like, hey, hey, nah, we
Speaker 1: do it here, we do it this way. We have
Speaker 1: talked about this. Yeah, I know, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: I come back a week later, he's doing it wrong again,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, hey, we're gonna set you free in
Speaker 1: Jesus name. Okay, I mean there's one I'm telling you
Speaker 1: how to do this. And he looks at me and
Speaker 1: he says, I'm not like you. And I said, okay, change.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be like me, but you gotta
Speaker 1: do it like I do it. This is the right way,
Speaker 1: do it, this way. Change. And you know God does
Speaker 1: that with us. There's the thing in Christianity. If we're
Speaker 1: going the wrong way on something, God says stop. This
Speaker 1: is called sin going this way or stupid going this way.
Speaker 1: And sometimes they're the same thing. And we're going this way,
Speaker 1: and then God says stop, and we turn change and
Speaker 1: we go the other way. It's called repentance in Christianity,
Speaker 1: isn't it I was going the wrong way, I repent,
Speaker 1: I stop, I change direction. This isn't working. Continuing to
Speaker 1: do the same thing over and over again and expecting
Speaker 1: a different result is the definition of insanity. Stop and change.
Speaker 1: And you know what, He gives us the dignity and
Speaker 1: the power of choice that we can just decide change.
Speaker 1: You ever met someone that just quit smoking. I have.
Speaker 1: They didn't have anything, they didn't do any kind of
Speaker 1: program and It's okay if you did a program and whatever,
Speaker 1: that's fine. But they just they just said, I'm not
Speaker 1: in anyone. I just quit. I've met people like that now.
Speaker 1: A lot of people do other stuff that's okay, But
Speaker 1: you can just with some things. It's certainly behaviors that
Speaker 1: we're doing. I can just I'm not saying that's my
Speaker 1: wife ever again. I'm just gonna change. It didn't work
Speaker 1: well when I said it last night. I'm not doing
Speaker 1: that again. So thank god the poor woman is not
Speaker 1: married to the same guy she married forty years ago.
Speaker 1: Because I get the opportunity to change, and I haven't arrived,
Speaker 1: but I'm considerably bad because I've had the opportunity to change.
Speaker 1: And it's a decision. You get to decide. No one
Speaker 1: decides that for you. Pastor doesn't decide it. Dave Ramsey
Speaker 1: doesn't decide it. You know, no one in Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: For sure decides it for you. You get to decide
Speaker 1: when you're gonna change. God won't even make you do it.
Speaker 1: He'll make you wish you did, but he will not
Speaker 1: make you do it. So there's five things that are
Speaker 1: baseline in all the data that we have, and the
Speaker 1: millions and millions of families we've interacted with that have
Speaker 1: changed and moved from high stress, broke horrible situation with
Speaker 1: money to becoming wealthy over time. And this is not
Speaker 1: this is not some kind of magical thing. This is
Speaker 1: pretty much like if you want corn, you should plant
Speaker 1: some corn. If you're a farmer, you don't go out
Speaker 1: and pray over the mud. You put corn in the ground,
Speaker 1: you weed fertilized, and then you reap what you have sung.
Speaker 1: So you know, sometimes I meet my brothers sisters in
Speaker 1: Christ who have been oversaved and they're just standing over
Speaker 1: the mud praying. Saint Ambrose said, work like it all
Speaker 1: depends on you. Pray like it all depends on God.
Speaker 1: Where our faith meets our faithfulness is where all things
Speaker 1: are unleashed. You gotta be faithful in the little things,
Speaker 1: and then you'll be giving more to manager. You ever
Speaker 1: read that scripture? And so you know the first thing
Speaker 1: we gotta do all these five things. You start doing
Speaker 1: these five things, they will not fix your life. By Friday.
Speaker 1: It won't happen. We I'll tell you what will happen.
Speaker 1: You'll walk a little straighter. It's like all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you'll think a little clearer about the future. Instead of
Speaker 1: thank God, it's Friday, Oh God, it's Monday. And instead
Speaker 1: of saying, thank god it's Friday, Oh guy's Monday, you
Speaker 1: start thinking about ten years out. Because where there is
Speaker 1: no vision, the people perish. You want corn, you gotta
Speaker 1: have a vision. Put corn the ground and it'll be
Speaker 1: spring before you see it, dron that far and befall
Speaker 1: before you get corn. So if you want microwave, you
Speaker 1: probably shouldn't talk to God because he's more in the
Speaker 1: crock pot business. Occasionally he just microwaves it, but that's seldom,
Speaker 1: and we call those miracles because they're seldom. Most of
Speaker 1: the time he's dealing with us to get us right,
Speaker 1: and then the corn comes in and we got the
Speaker 1: muscles to carry it. Most of the time, that's what's
Speaker 1: going on. There's a process, in other words, that's vitally important.
Speaker 1: The first thing you gotta do if you want to
Speaker 1: win with money is you have to get on a budget,
Speaker 1: a written game plan. Jesus said, don't build a tower
Speaker 1: without first counting the cost, lest you get halfway up,
Speaker 1: And all who see you began to mock you and
Speaker 1: say this man began to build and was unable to finish.
Speaker 1: My friend's exiglar used to say, if you aim at nothing,
Speaker 1: you'll hit it every time. My friend John Maxwell says,
Speaker 1: a budget is people telling their money what to do
Speaker 1: instead of wondering where it went. If you manage money
Speaker 1: for a company called You Incorporated, and you manage money
Speaker 1: for you Incorporated the way you manage money for you,
Speaker 1: now would you fire You don't answer that if you're
Speaker 1: not a faithful steward. We have a clear example in
Speaker 1: the parable the Talents that God is going to take
Speaker 1: the money from you and give it to the one
Speaker 1: who did manage it well, the one who planted corn
Speaker 1: and tended to the field instead of stood back and
Speaker 1: watched it rain on the mud. Please don't be disorganized,
Speaker 1: living chaotically and impulsively with the maturity of a four
Speaker 1: year old on the cereal isle, having a fit on purchases,
Speaker 1: and then expect God to bless it. When you say, Lord,
Speaker 1: send me money, he will not send you money. It's
Speaker 1: in scripture. Faithful with the little things, then I will
Speaker 1: give you more. My son's a grown man now. He's
Speaker 1: an executive on our team and is an absolutely fabulous,
Speaker 1: world class leader. When he was a kid, he was
Speaker 1: fourteen years old. He comes in one day he says, Daddy,
Speaker 1: I want a new Corvette when I turned sixteen, and
Speaker 1: I said no, because I'm a loving father. I've seen
Speaker 1: you drive. You're incompetent. If I put you in a
Speaker 1: four hundred horse power fiberglass body zero to sixty and
Speaker 1: two point seven seconds, you'll kill yourself and someone else. No,
Speaker 1: I answered his prayer as a loving father. No, I said,
Speaker 1: you will be getting an old chavette with a tired
Speaker 1: gerbil under the hood. And my son, when you are
Speaker 1: faithful with the little things, like you polish that thing,
Speaker 1: you change its oil. It doesn't come home full of
Speaker 1: McDonald's boxes because you keep it clean. You pull it
Speaker 1: up to the curb properly. You don't leave our house
Speaker 1: on two wheels. When you take care of the little things,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about moving you up. That's what God says
Speaker 1: all the time. When you're faithful in the little things,
Speaker 1: you'll be given more to manage it all. In scripture,
Speaker 1: Prayable the Talents indicates that the mind of man plans
Speaker 1: his ways, but the Lord directs his steps. All of
Speaker 1: this is in there. A loving father is not going
Speaker 1: to give you something you can't handle, because it'll crush you.
Speaker 1: Be on a budget. The second thing we have to
Speaker 1: do is we need to get out of debt. Now
Speaker 1: you knew Dave Ramsey was gonna say that the rituals
Speaker 1: over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender.
Speaker 1: We're carring around so much student loan debt that we
Speaker 1: think Sally May is a family member. We have Master
Speaker 1: Card who named that the borrower's slave and he's my master.
Speaker 1: Look at that, and it's tough to serve two masters
Speaker 1: because you'll love one and hate the other. I worship
Speaker 1: at the altar of the Gray Fico score, but my
Speaker 1: tithe is not up to date. Sharon and I saw
Speaker 1: this and we said no more, We're done. And we
Speaker 1: got the scissors out and we said, okay, we're gonna
Speaker 1: light a little candle here and we're going to have
Speaker 1: a plassectomy. We're going to have plastic surgery because what's
Speaker 1: in your wallet money Airline miles. Oh good. We did
Speaker 1: the largest study of millionaires ever done in North America
Speaker 1: two years ago, over ten thousand millionaires that we studied
Speaker 1: eighty nine percent of them became millionaires without and without
Speaker 1: using an inheritance to become a millionaire. Nine out of
Speaker 1: ten of them became millionaires on their own. You know
Speaker 1: how many of them made their money off of airline
Speaker 1: miles zero precisely discover Freedom. You're weird, Ramsey, I know,
Speaker 1: but normals broke. I don't want to be normal. You
Speaker 1: mean you don't have any credit cards? Not having any
Speaker 1: credit cards? Start where they went bankrupty wouldn't give me any,
Speaker 1: and then later on they start handing them out like
Speaker 1: candy again, and we didn't take any because we were through.
Speaker 1: We figured out the borrower slave to the lender. We don't.
Speaker 1: We figured out if we don't have any payments, you
Speaker 1: know what, we got money. That's weird. You don't have
Speaker 1: any credit cards? Now, that's my wallet, green presidents faces,
Speaker 1: four pieces of plastic, my debit card on my business,
Speaker 1: my debit card on my personal, my driver's slices, and
Speaker 1: my handgun carry permit. And that's it. Rednecks in North
Speaker 1: Carolina too, Okay, yeah, I said I said that over
Speaker 1: in California, but I got arrested. But good to be
Speaker 1: back in America. But uh, oh, I love you California people,
Speaker 1: we love you. We love you. It's all good and uh,
Speaker 1: your state's crazy, but we love you. And so, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh. So a guy called me on the radio
Speaker 1: the other day and he's like, if I got a
Speaker 1: problem and people call me on I this talk radio
Speaker 1: show thing. And I said, what's the problem. He goes,
Speaker 1: You're gonna kill me. I'm not gonna kill you. You're
Speaker 1: in Texas, I'm in Tennessee. I can't get to you.
Speaker 1: What'd you do? He goes, Well, I got my truck payment.
Speaker 1: I'm like, how much is your truck payment? Seven undred
Speaker 1: and sixty nine dollars seven hundred and sixty on a truck?
Speaker 1: I said, ma'am. He goes, I know, I know, I know.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, how much is your house payment? Well,
Speaker 1: we we live in a double whit it's five hundred bucks.
Speaker 1: I said, dude, if your truck payment's bigger than your
Speaker 1: house payment, you might be a redneck. There was car
Speaker 1: payment in America right now. It's five hundred and forty
Speaker 1: six dollars over eighty four months. If you didn't have
Speaker 1: that because you drove a paid for vehicle that you
Speaker 1: weren't trying to impress someone you don't know at a stoplight,
Speaker 1: and you didn't have a five hundred and forty six
Speaker 1: dollars payment, and you put that in good growth stock
Speaker 1: mutual funds. From make's thirty to age sixty five, you'd
Speaker 1: have five point six million dollars in that one account.
Speaker 1: Hope you like the car. When I quit borrowing money,
Speaker 1: I suddenly had money. You don't have to make a
Speaker 1: lot to have money when you have any payments. Because
Speaker 1: most Americans, we work, we bring it home, we change
Speaker 1: its names, and we send it off, and we send
Speaker 1: it to Ford Motor Credit, and we send it to Chevrolet,
Speaker 1: and they go down. Other than the last four or
Speaker 1: five months, when cars are going backwards, like everything's going
Speaker 1: backwards right now, used cars are actually going up in
Speaker 1: value for the first time in the history of man
Speaker 1: and U and it'll catch up and it won't be
Speaker 1: that way long. But I mean other than that time,
Speaker 1: I mean, Chevy is like, you know, they're all this way.
Speaker 1: It's like, you know, these things go down in value
Speaker 1: like a rock. That's where Chevy got that, like a rock. Right, So,
Speaker 1: and we're financing this thing. I don't mind you having
Speaker 1: a nice car. I justn't want your nice car to
Speaker 1: have you. I want you to have choices and margin
Speaker 1: and room to be generous, and room to think about
Speaker 1: your future instead of the present, because if we live
Speaker 1: for Friday, you don't that much of a life. The
Speaker 1: third one's weird. You have to foster quality relationships. Bible says,
Speaker 1: be not deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits. Did you
Speaker 1: know you become who you hang around with. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to be generous, you need to hang
Speaker 1: out with generous people. If you want to hang out
Speaker 1: with people that are world changers, you need to hang
Speaker 1: out world changers. If you want to hang out with
Speaker 1: people that know. If you want to know the Bible,
Speaker 1: we probably ought to hang out with some people that
Speaker 1: know the Bible. If you want to hang out with people,
Speaker 1: if you want to have a great marriage, you probably
Speaker 1: ought to hang out with people other than your four
Speaker 1: friends who just got six divorces. I'm minister to them,
Speaker 1: I love them, I'm not snubbing them, but I don't
Speaker 1: need to learn marriage from them. And I catch myself
Speaker 1: I talk like the people I hang around with. The
Speaker 1: verbal cues, the cadence of your sentence I was in
Speaker 1: New York City the other day. Y'all know all those
Speaker 1: people have an accent up there. They all talk just
Speaker 1: at it's crazy, and then they come down South, and
Speaker 1: you know what, we teach them how to talk Eventually,
Speaker 1: you know, because you become who you hang around with.
Speaker 1: Did you know the studies have shown that your income
Speaker 1: will be the average will be within ten percent of
Speaker 1: the average of your ten closest friends income. Some of
Speaker 1: your going I needed some new friends. Maybe now I'm
Speaker 1: never saying be snobbish to somebody I'm minister to. I'll
Speaker 1: spend time with, I will love anyone. I love people.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about your crew. Who's in your center, who's
Speaker 1: walking with you, who's lifting your arms, who's smacking them down,
Speaker 1: who's calling you out? Who You're gonna talk like them,
Speaker 1: You're gonna read like them, You're gonna binge watch the
Speaker 1: same thing on Netflix, stagger King. You're gonna become who
Speaker 1: you hang around with. Be very careful, you know this.
Speaker 1: That's why you don't let your kids run around a
Speaker 1: juvenil delinquents, because you know little Johnny down the streets
Speaker 1: smoking weed. You hang it, kid hangs out with litt Johnny.
Speaker 1: Yourki's gonna be a weed head too. You know this. No,
Speaker 1: you ain't hanging out with Johnny. Johnny is not smart.
Speaker 1: We will pray for little Johnny. He can come over
Speaker 1: at our house and play, but we're not. No, no,
Speaker 1: You're not gonna be like him. Moms and dads, do that.
Speaker 1: Be not deceived, evil company, corrupts good habits. Be very careful.
Speaker 1: The third, fourth one is save and invests. Save money,
Speaker 1: save money. The Bible says, in the house of the
Speaker 1: Wiser stores of choice, food and oil. But a foolish
Speaker 1: man devours all he has. You spend everything you make.
Speaker 1: You're a fool. I didn't say it, God said it.
Speaker 1: Get mad at him. There's a time or two in
Speaker 1: my life. God's had a red arrow point in a fool. Fool, fool,
Speaker 1: and you don't want to be a biblical fool. This
Speaker 1: is not a greeting like hey foo, No, this is
Speaker 1: like a fool in the house of the wise or
Speaker 1: stores of choice, food and oil. In Biblical times, when Solomon,
Speaker 1: the smartest man ever lived, wrote that one of the
Speaker 1: wealthiest men they ever lived. By the Way too, wrote
Speaker 1: that in the House of the Wise there were two
Speaker 1: classes of people in Israel in those days, there were
Speaker 1: not a middle class. There was no middle class. There
Speaker 1: was peasants, poverty, which was most everyone, and there was
Speaker 1: the aristocracy. The aristocracy the wealthy are the only ones
Speaker 1: that had what you and I eat every day called
Speaker 1: choice food. The best food the world has to offer, clean, safe,
Speaker 1: good for you. That's what they aristocracy ate. Maybe not
Speaker 1: good for you, but they ate the good stuff. Okay,
Speaker 1: I mean we're talking Israel. So what the poverty is.
Speaker 1: It's hummus, you know, pet of bread, right, this is
Speaker 1: what you got. This is the whole puppy. In the
Speaker 1: house of the Wise are stores of choice food. Choice
Speaker 1: food was an indication of wealth. Oil was used all
Speaker 1: throughout the Old Testament to anoint to show God's spirit.
Speaker 1: The Prophet anointed the shepherd boy David, and later it
Speaker 1: says that the anointing drops from the beard onto the body.
Speaker 1: The spirit of God drops from leadership into the body
Speaker 1: of that leadership. God's spirit is always represented by oil. Consequently,
Speaker 1: oil was highly valued. You could take a caraffe of
Speaker 1: oil and trade it in the marketplace for anything. Because
Speaker 1: it was also used to keep the whole the lamps
Speaker 1: lit in the Holy of Holies. It was highly prized,
Speaker 1: highly esteemed. I leave valued. Now let's do it again.
Speaker 1: In the House of the Wise are stores of choice,
Speaker 1: food and oil. Well, the Bible says the rich people
Speaker 1: are going to hell. No it doesn't, No, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: If you believe that rich people are going to hell
Speaker 1: from scriptures, then you don't believe Jesus's blood on the
Speaker 1: cross was real, which would by definition make you a heretic.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of warnings about wealth. It's powerful, be
Speaker 1: careful with it. I had warned you about that earlier.
Speaker 1: But rich people aren't. And the Bible does not save
Speaker 1: money is the root of all evil. It says the
Speaker 1: love of money is the root of all evil. So
Speaker 1: the first thing we save money for is we save
Speaker 1: money for in a emergency because Grandma said, save for
Speaker 1: a rainy day. Visual aid. It's going to rain. It's
Speaker 1: going to rain, Dave, you should be positive. I'm positive
Speaker 1: it's going to rain. When pandemics hit and you have
Speaker 1: no debt and a pile of money in your emergency fund,
Speaker 1: it's a whole different level of stress that your body
Speaker 1: takes in peace that passes all understanding because you're the
Speaker 1: third pig, not the one with sticks and straw, but
Speaker 1: the one that built the brick house. I planted the corn,
Speaker 1: the corn came. It's awful out there, and I felt
Speaker 1: bad for a lot of people, and a lot of
Speaker 1: businesses were really, really struggling. But we're sitting on a
Speaker 1: campus that's one hundred percent debt free. We're sitting on
Speaker 1: a pile of retained earnings. None of our people lost
Speaker 1: their job, not wine. None of them missed a paycheck,
Speaker 1: not wine. Is that because Dave Ramsey is noble? No,
Speaker 1: it's because God says if you plant corn, corn will
Speaker 1: grow if you follow his guidelines, his principles, they work
Speaker 1: every time. And so if you're on a plan and
Speaker 1: you get out of debt and you're saving money, you
Speaker 1: can save more money when you don't have payments and
Speaker 1: you're hanging out with people that are generous and future
Speaker 1: thinking instead of short term thinkers, impulsive thinkers, children. One
Speaker 1: definition of maturity is the ability to delay pleasure. If
Speaker 1: you're hanging out with people like that, it will naturally
Speaker 1: believe bring the Christian to the fifth one, be outrageously generous.
Speaker 1: Did you know you can give money away if you
Speaker 1: have some. Did you know that people who feed poor,
Speaker 1: people who feed starving kids are people who had money.
Speaker 1: That's where it came from. It came from people who
Speaker 1: did the stuff I was talking about. They're not evil,
Speaker 1: they're not horrible, they're not corrupt, they didn't steal that
Speaker 1: in cheat. They serve the community in scale and consequently
Speaker 1: have the ability to serve the community in scale. Generosity
Speaker 1: comes from having planted corn. So now I got some
Speaker 1: to share with my brothers and sisters, and it's the
Speaker 1: most fun you'll ever have with money. Outrage is crazy.
Speaker 1: Generosity you gotta do it. You gotta do it, y'all.
Speaker 1: It's unbelievable. What will happen. It'll turn everything loose in
Speaker 1: your life. Your creativity will go up, your passion will
Speaker 1: go up, your health will change. When you start letting
Speaker 1: money flow through you instead of to you, it changes
Speaker 1: everything in your life. But it is a mathematical requirement
Speaker 1: that for money to flow through you, you you have to
Speaker 1: get it to you. You got to pay the like
Speaker 1: bill first, feed your kids, because if you don't take
Speaker 1: care of your own household first, you're worse than an unbeliever.
Speaker 1: Are we following scripture here, you're not selfish. You just broke.
Speaker 1: We got to work on not being broke. I've been there,
Speaker 1: and it's scary as crud. I don't want to live
Speaker 1: like that. So we tithe. As Evangelical Christians, we always
Speaker 1: tie that means give a tenth of our income to
Speaker 1: our local church. That's your baseline. But I want you
Speaker 1: to do some other stuff beyond that that just is
Speaker 1: mind blowing, just for fun. I want you to just
Speaker 1: carry some money around. Here's one for you. Let's do this.
Speaker 1: And they told me to be done in about forty
Speaker 1: five minutes because that's when the Holy Spirit leaves. So
Speaker 1: and I don't want to be up here by myself.
Speaker 1: So Thanksgiving Easter's quicker when you're getting the family together
Speaker 1: and you're picking up the kids and maybe you're going
Speaker 1: down the road or two states over to go see grandma.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you're going to cross town or whatever.
Speaker 1: We're going to grandma's house and Grandma's gonna make a feast.
Speaker 1: LL know what I'm talking about. Maybe not, but maybe
Speaker 1: you could see the type of picture this is. This
Speaker 1: is what happens to us, and so what I want
Speaker 1: you to do is. I want you to load the
Speaker 1: kids up. I want you to leave twenty minutes early,
Speaker 1: and I want you on the way to get off
Speaker 1: in an exit and find yourself like a waffle house.
Speaker 1: Y'all know what waffle house is, and pull up right
Speaker 1: in front of the glass and leave the car running
Speaker 1: until the kids put down your screens. Watch God, behave,
Speaker 1: and I want you to go in have a cup
Speaker 1: of coffee at the front counter, at the lunch counter.
Speaker 1: Y'all know what I'm talking about. You have been a
Speaker 1: lunch count. And this is Thanksgiving weekend, this is Easter weekend.
Speaker 1: You know who's working at the counter at a waffle house.
Speaker 1: Somebody needs a job. You know who's working at the
Speaker 1: counter in a waffle house on Easter weekend. Somebody needs
Speaker 1: a job. Bag So I want you to have a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee. Order a cup of coffee. You probably
Speaker 1: not even gonna drink it, And before you leave, I
Speaker 1: want you to to get chat about three or four of
Speaker 1: these Uncle Benjamin's hundreds, slip them under the coffee cup,
Speaker 1: and slip out to the car. Hey, kids, watch God,
Speaker 1: watch him. Here's what she'll do. She'll walk along and
Speaker 1: pick it up in her eyes will get back. She's
Speaker 1: looking around like it's a trick. It's been so long
Speaker 1: since anything good it's happened to her, and God just
Speaker 1: showed up. You just changed him net worth one hundred
Speaker 1: percent of time. And even if she's not been in
Speaker 1: church in her life, or even if she was there
Speaker 1: last week one hundred percent of the time, who knows
Speaker 1: to say thank you? Can she can smell the aroma
Speaker 1: of the Holy Spirit that you left dripping there. You
Speaker 1: didn't leave a track you lost. You left three four
Speaker 1: hundred bucks. I want you to go out and spend
Speaker 1: three four hundred bucks on a date night on yourself.
Speaker 1: I want you to do that too. I want you
Speaker 1: to have fun with money, but I dare you to
Speaker 1: have more fun than that. So here's the thing you
Speaker 1: can decide. I'm gonna budget, I'm gonna get out of that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna change. I'm gonna start handling my life the
Speaker 1: way God instructs in his love letter to me. And
Speaker 1: he's crazy about me, and he's got a plan for me.
Speaker 1: And it's not to bring me hard, but to bring
Speaker 1: me hope. I'm gonna get better. I'm gonna be a
Speaker 1: diligent farmer, because the diligent prosper and the lazy man doesn't.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna change now. Am I perfect? No? Good, Gracious,
Speaker 1: I'm not perfect. I mess up about every day. I
Speaker 1: don't mess this stuff up. I took care of him
Speaker 1: all that in my twenties. I mess up lots of things.
Speaker 1: We all do. We're all working on this, we're all,
Speaker 1: you know. But I can do all things through Christ,
Speaker 1: who strengthens me. I can decide I'm gonna change. God's
Speaker 1: crazy about you. And if you wandered in here because
Speaker 1: you saw a Facebook post said Dave Ramsey is gonna
Speaker 1: be here and you don't know him, let me just
Speaker 1: tell you this, Jesus Man, you change your life. God,
Speaker 1: we thank you for these folks. We turn this service
Speaker 1: over to Pastor Stephen. But Father, as I'm doing that,
Speaker 1: I just want to pray a blessing and ask that
Speaker 1: you show up for folks here, that if they felt condemned,
Speaker 1: that they're not but instead convicted. And Father, God, give
Speaker 1: them the power of the strength, the love, the ability
Speaker 1: to run the distance and finish the race well, the
Speaker 1: ability to walk with what You've got for them. In
Speaker 1: what you've got for them, bring them protection, bring them provision,
Speaker 1: and help them to be a shining light on a
Speaker 1: hill that is unbelievably generous in Jesus' name. Amen. Well,
Speaker 1: if you enjoyed today's podcast, there are a couple of
Speaker 1: things I'd love for you to do. Make sure to subscribe, rate,
Speaker 1: and review this podcast. You can also help us reach
Speaker 1: others by investing today at Elevationchurch dot org. Slash GiB
Speaker 1: and thanks again for joining us on the Elevation Podcast.