In a world powered by money, how do you achieve your financial freedom?
What exactly is financial freedom? Working four hours a week? Living from the profits of a great idea? Climbing a mountain and reclusing from society? Erasing all your debt? Retiring early?
Some feel it is the freedom to do what you want without money constraints. Others, to be able to live without working.
How much money do you need to achieve it? Maybe one million dollars is enough for you to achieve financial freedom, while for others, one million dollars may not be enough to cover even their yearly expenses.
Money in my pocket may be finite, but money is really infinite. Because after all money is a number value, an amount that has no limit. Like an endless rope that you pull closer and closer but never reach its end, no matter how fast you run it through your hands.
If we knew our lives would end tomorrow, would it matter how much money we have to our name? It may benefit our family members, but for us, personally, it is just as much as zero. Because no matter how high your pile of rope is, it does not take you anywhere beyond death.
So why do we worry so much about money? Not only those struggling to make ends meet but also many billionaires and millionaires who are obsessed with increasing their capital.
Clearly then, ultimate financial freedom is not about cash amounts, personal needs or inner satisfaction. Financial freedom has more to do with the feeling of being one hundred percent in control. Or at least the illusion of being in control.
If it is not by accumulating more money, how do you achieve your true financial freedom? That inner feeling of being free from the power of money or possessions, available to the rich or the poor because money is not the problem, the need for control is.
Imagine if you carried in your pockets at all times, lots of pebbles. As life progresses, you add more and more pebbles to your pocket. People ask about the pebbles and you tell them that it is very important to own a lot of pebbles because you never know when you will need to pile them up like a mountain, so you can climb high away from serious problems.
Over time, the pebbles start to make holes in your pockets, and as the pebbles slip to the ground you hurry from right to left collecting all the pebbles dropping down. After some decades, you don't even see the sky anymore, or the faces of those around you, as your eyes are always scanning the floor for pebbles. You become so tied down by the weight of the pebbles that one day there is a fire in the house, and you just can't run away because you got to keep all these pebbles in your pockets even when their weight is higher than your strength.
There is a better way to live. Freedom from having to scan the ground all the time, freedom to look up, to look around. It comes from engaging in a different monetary system, where the more you give, the wealthier and freer you become. The more you share, the bigger your portfolio. Because this monetary system is not perishable, it is actually made of love.
"Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 1 Pet 1:18-19
We don't have to be in control of our lives, either through money, power or self-discipline. Nobody is actually in control of their lives, so why do we deceive ourselves? God created us to let him have all the control, because his control is always out of love, while ours is always out of selfishness.
What would our lives look like if we gave all of our control to God?
Jesus died to free us from our selfishness, to free us from the power of our pebbles.
Let him carry your pebbles, let him define how many pebbles are enough for you, let him help you find the pebbles when you need them. And even if the serious problems come around and you don't have enough pebbles to make a mountain to climb high, he will be there with you and he will lift your eyes high so you can see that there is a safe place higher than any pebble mountain you may pile.
Keep your life free from love of money, be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper; I will not fear, what can man do to me? Hebrews 13:5-6
That is true Financial Freedom!
