Breaking the Chains of Debt

Did you know that if you tell a lie, spread a myth loud enough, long enough, with enough repetition, eventually a bunch of people will think it's the truth.

Did you know that if you tell a lie, spread a myth loud enough with enough of an ad budget, with enough sophistication in your marketing campaign that you make it to where everyone believes this lie, the society, the culture adopts the lie as the truth?

It does not make it the truth.

It's still a lie.

Just because a bunch of people believe it doesn't mean anything.

A bunch of people are crazy.

Y'all with me on this?

Isn't it scary to think that people can be, quote, indoctrinated, marketed to, advertised to, to the point that we can't breathe in our own intellect and think for ourselves.

We lose for some reason our ability to do critical thought, and then we look stupid because we are.

We've believed a lie.

It doesn't make it the truth if everybody votes for it.

It doesn't make it the truth if everybody thinks it's so.

In a culture where a lot of people are really not winning, as a matter of fact, if they all believe it's not so, that probably means it is so.

Because it's kind of a Dr.

Phil moment.

How's that working for you?

It's not.

Just because everyone believes something, quote, everyone, unquote, doesn't mean it's right.

We really have to establish that when we start talking about personal finance and money and what the Bible has to say about money.

Because here's the deal: I went broke a few years ago, I lost everything because I was stupid.

And then I started reading what God's Word has to say about money, and I got smarter.

And what's weird about this is it's like a lot of things in this book, it's countercultural.

It's perpendicular to what everyone says.

But everyone's not winning.

Their marriages aren't winning, their kids aren't winning, their careers aren't winning, and their money's not winning.

So I really don't care what they think.

This, however, works.

I have traveled the world, I have never seen a Jewish slum.

Think about it.

Something to think about.

So, what I want to talk to you about tonight is this.

There is a product that today, I want to talk to you about this right now.

There is a product today that has been marketed so aggressively, so thoroughly, that to imagine living without this product is inconceivable for most people in North America.

They have done such a good job selling it that people get angry at me and I get hate mail suggesting that you shouldn't buy this product.

I gotta tell you, that's weird.

That's warped.

But that means that it has been indoctrinated into us so deeply that it's got its claws into our spirit, and we've believed a lie to where we will fight for the lie.

That's weird.

We have a culture that's sitting in the middle of that right now, and I spend my life like the crazy preacher on the street corner screaming out a truth that everyone thinks I'm nuts.

But I'm having fun.

I'm having a blast.

Because I gotta tell you, a few people started listening, and then about a hundred thousand started listening, and then millions started listening, and tens of millions started listening.

That's weird.

And and what happens is every time I meet them, they're smiling because they're winning.

And they go, Dave, you taught me the truth and I'd never heard it before.

And it was weird, and I didn't like it, and I really didn't like you at first.

I get that a lot.

But once I started becoming being able to win, it changed everything for me.

Let me show you what I'm talking about.

Everybody stand up for a second.

Here's what I want you to do.

I want everybody in this place to close your eyes.

Now I will call on you if you don't play, okay?

So close your eyes.

Close your eyes.

Yeah, you.

Okay, now.

Now, with your eyes closed, don't open them and don't move fast so as to hurt someone or give away your answer.

I want you to point north.

With your eyes closed, no cheating, no looking around.

It's okay to be wrong, it's just not okay not to play.

I won't make fun of you for being wrong, I will make fun of you for at least not trying.

Guess, in other words, if you don't know.

Which way is north?

Open your eyes and look around.

Would you agree with me that someone's wrong?

I don't know.

I'm lost too, but according to my compass, north is right through here.

Now I did see one guy pointing like this.

He did a little cheerleading move.

But at least he was playing, right?

And here's the deal.

If you weren't pointing this way, you were wrong.

Oh.

Is your self-esteem damaged?

You were wrong.

You were wrong.

You weren't right.

That's north.

And if you don't agree with that, you're wrong.

You can't say that in our culture today, can you?

It's like, no, I get to make mine up.

No, you no, you don't, Doofus.

That's north.

If you want to go to Canada, this is the way.

You can get there this way, but it's the long way around.

You don't get to make up the truth.

Regardless of how you feel.

We're all about our feelings.

But you're wrong! Isn't that interesting?

Here's the problem.

If you're going anywhere but this way and are using any point of north other than this, you're also lost.

And you're gonna drive in circles and you're gonna be frustrated, and your family's gonna be mad, you're gonna be late for dinner.

Y'all with me?

It's important to know the truth and act on it.

That's a big deal in our culture.

Alright, everybody have a seat.

Nice job.

So here's the compass.

Now, if you're not a person of faith and you're just visiting because I'm here, awesome, I'm glad you're here.

But I'm an evangelical Christian, meaning not ignorant redneck, it means I believe the Bible.

Okay.

It means I believe this is the truth.

This is your compass.

And to the extent your little theory doesn't line up with this, you're wrong.

And so am I.

You can judge me by this.

People say you shouldn't judge people.

Yeah, you should.

Jesus did it all the time.

He walked up to a fig tree, didn't do figs.

The fig tree is supposed to do one thing, it's supposed to fig.

A fig tree that doesn't fig is useless.

And Jesus cursed it and it died.

He killed it.

Because it was a figless fig tree.

He judged it.

We're supposed to judge.

We're supposed to judge.

Not in a mean spirit or an angry spirit.

But this is north.

This is not.

Don't go that way.

You're gonna get hurt.

That's what we're talking about.

It's a very important concept to grasp because what I'm talking about is this debt has been marketed to us.

Debt, borrowing money, is a product that financial institutions sell, has been marketed to us so aggressively with such intensity for so long in this culture that we have come to believe that the great FICO is our provider.

And we worship at the altar of the great FICO.

Thank you, FICO.

You are the provider of all things.

We worship you, FICO.

We bring you offerings of interest.

And here's the problem.

I've got a finance degree with all these letters and licenses after my name, so I know all the reasons you're supposed to borrow money and good debt and all that stuff until I read the Bible.

And I can't find anything in there good about debt.

It says you're a slave, it says you're a fool, it says it's a curse.

It never says it's a salvation issue.

You're not going to hell for borrowing money.

And it never says God doesn't love you if you borrow money.

He loves stupid people a lot.

Okay?

It doesn't say that at all.

It just nowhere in Scripture says anything good about debt, and it always is talking of warning avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid.

Well, but what about, what about, well, what about?

What about?

See, you got to get a new way of looking at things.

A while ago you didn't know that was north, and so you just went like this.

Now you got you learned something.

You got a new way of looking at things.

Let's look at that for a minute.

Let's here, look, look, look at look at the screen and think about this.

Look at these faces.

Do you see the two people looking at each other?

Raise your hand if you see two people looking at each other.

How many of you see the white candlestick or the vase in the middle?

Good.

If you didn't see it, now you're going, oh yeah, there's two things, yeah.

How many people see two people getting ready to kiss?

Sex fiends.

Okay, now.

Here's another one.

Punctuation matters.

See if you'll learn something.

Gentlemen, if you're riding home with a lady, I'll help you.

The answer is the last one.

But isn't it funny how your mind sees the punctuation one way or another?

Something, but now you've learned there's two possible meanings to this statement only by changing the colons and the commas.

Learning has just occurred.

Learning is good.

Ignorance will get you killed.

That's why we tell our kids don't play in the street until we get mad at them.

Then we say, play in the street.

Right?

Go play in the traffic.

But ignorance will get you killed.

You gotta know that a hot stove will burn you.

Ignorance is not a good thing.

And it's not a lack of intelligence.

I'm fairly intelligent about a lot of things, but I don't know other things.

Intelligence is not the problem.

It's I don't know.

A lot of you with a PhD were pointing the wrong way a while ago.

You just didn't know because you got turned around coming into the building, and it's that way.

That's not a bad thing, and God's not mad at you.

I'm not mad at you.

But you gotta learn.

Here's another one.

Give this one a look.

That one's hard to see.

The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender.

See, what happens to us is we get out of college or we get out of high school and we get married, right?

No, this is not marriage.

The borrower is slave to the lender.

My wife, Sharon, and I started out with a little bit of a student loan debt and a little bit of a MasterCard.

Did some of you do that?

Say yes.

And she was driving a 1902 Pinto.

You remember those old cars when they blew up?

They used to explode.

And I went and bought her a brand new car that I wanted.

On payments.

And then people came over, we've been married for 20 minutes, and people came over and said, You gotta buy a house, you gotta buy a house, you gotta buy a house, you gotta buy a house.

You gotta buy a house.

Everybody knows you gotta buy a house.

If you don't get a house, you never get ahead.

I mean, we've been married for 20 minutes.

You gotta buy a house.

And so we bought a house with nothing down because that's how much we had to put down.

Nothing.

They called it creative financing.

Which when you look it up in the Greek means too broke to buy a house.

And I went down to Circuit City, you remember those guys, they went broke.

And I bought a television on 90 days, same as cash.

But it was a stereo television, so I got a stereo.

Now, we have financed ourselves in the first 20 minutes of marriage up to our eyeballs.

We got car payments, stereo payments, we got a student loan left over from college.

And so we go buy a house about 10 blocks over from where I grew up.

Larry Briquette used to say, we spend the first five to seven years of our marriage trying to attain the same standard of living as our parents, only it took them 35 years to get there.

So there we are.

We got a better car than mom and dad, live in the same neighborhood than mom and dad, and for sure got a better stereo system than mom and dad.

Only problem is your leg gets tired.

Because the borrower is slave to the lender.

I don't care if you believe it or not, you'd be wrong if you don't believe it.

52% of the marriages end in divorce in North America today.

The number one cause of divorce?

Money fights and money problems.

Hard to be married when you look like this.

People come in my office all the time like this.

Dude, can you get us out?

We sit down with them, we say, Yeah, we can.

It's hard to get out, though.

It's tough.

If you work hard and you work a plan, you can be set free.

And you can break loose.

And we worked our tail ends off.

And we hit bottom, we crashed, drove old beat-up cars.

Our kids grew up in consignment sale, yes, experienced clothing.

And we worked and we worked and we worked and finally we paid off everything, including the house.

You know what you can do if you don't have any payments?

Anything you want.

And when you got payments, you're a slave.

Well, that's a metaphor from the Old Testament.

Yeah, well, when they towed off my jaguar and repo'd it, it wasn't a metaphor, sweetie.

When they foreclosed on houses that I owned, it wasn't a metaphor.

It was life.

You ever met a generous slave?

Hard to be generous when you're not in control of your life.

Hard to win.

Hard to look into the future.

Hard to think about winning when all you do is pay payments.

All the money comes in, all the money goes out.

Only the names are changed to protect the innocent.

Why?

We believed a lie.

We thought that was the best way to win with money.

And that's what we were told over and over and over.

Well, you'll never have a nice car if you don't have a payment.

Really?

The average car payment in America today is$485 over 86 months, according to the National Auto Dealers Association.

Take$485 and put it in a into a decent growth stock mutual fund, into a Roth IRA from age 30 to age 70, averaging 12%, you'll have$5.6 million.

I hope you like your car.

That's the cost of slavery.

It's a$5 million car.

And it's going down in value like a rock.

That's where Chevy got that.

Like a rock.

Now I got a Chevy truck, okay?

So you Ford people are no better.

It's found on the road depreciated.

It's not about the brand, it's about the concept.

Well, you never have a nice car.

Why not take the$485 and put it put it in a cookie jar for 10 months?

Is that$400?

Is that$4,850 after 10 months?

Is that add up in your city?

Is that like$5,000 about?

Say yes.

Can you go out through here and buy you a little Honda Accord or a little Ford Taurus for$5,000 to get you back and forth to work if you don't have a car payment?

Could you keep saving$500?

Say yes.

And 10 months later, would you have another$5,000 to put with your$5,000 car?

Would that be a$10,000 car?

Say yes.

This is called common sense.

It's how your grandmother did it.

Not I impulsed a car.

You did what?

So how do we get out?

Dave, you gotta have a credit card.

Really?

I don't have one.

Well, I get points.

Well, good.

I've met with thousands of millionaires in 20 years of doing financial counseling.

Never met a millionaire.

Said, Dave, you know I made my money with my points.

Dave, you know that discover points put me right over the top.

That was my breakthrough financially.

Never hear that.

Those airline miles, yeah, changed my life, Dave.

Never heard that.

But I hear all these people with these theories that they keep playing with snakes and can't figure out why they keep getting bitten.

I got four pieces of plastic in my wallet.

I have a debit card on my personal account, which means there has to be money in there to use it.

I have a debit card on my business account, which means there has to be money in there to use it.

I have my driver's license and my handgun carry permit.

That's all I got.

Everybody in California just ran for the exit.

So car payments don't work, credit cards don't.

You can't be a student without a student loan.

Can if you go to in-state tuition and you work while you're in school.

Oh, you can't do that.

My grades might go down.

Oh, actually, if you work 19 to 34 hours a week, the recent research shows you get a higher GPA than non-working students.

Why?

People who work actually are paying for part of it, so they actually go to class and everything.

It's very weird.

Strange stuff.

It's old school though, isn't it?

Kind of sound like your grandmother or your great-grandmother.

It's because that decades, those decades had common sense.

We were still aligned biblically with our money.

And we weren't hadn't become so self-absorbed that we were buying stuff we couldn't afford with money we didn't have to impress people we don't even really like.

We were out of control.

It's time to stop.

So how do we get out of debt?

It's tough.

It's tough.

Stupid has an orbital pull.

It has a gravitational pull to it.

When you're stuck in orbit of stupid, it's hard to get out.

You know how you break an orbit?

Just ask this rocket scientist.

Here's how you break an orbit.

You have to expend energy.

Extra energy.

You can't keep doing what you've been doing, or you're gonna keep getting what you've been getting.

Hello.

You gotta blow it up.

That's how you get out of debt.

I hear these people, they call up and they go, Dave, I have$20,000 in debt.

I make$600,000 a year, and I don't think I can get out.

I said, really?

I don't think you can either.

Why not?

Because you don't think you can.

And that's your biggest problem.

Dave, I got$20,000 in debt, and I make$22,000, and I'm gonna do whatever it takes to get out of debt.

I've sold one of the kids, should I sell the other one?

I think you're gonna make it.

Why?

Because you're willing to pay a price, you're willing to do what it takes to bust the orbit.

Requires energy.

I found it in the Bible.

It's interesting that all these things are in the Bible.

Proverbs 6, 1 through 7.

It says, if you've signed surety, my son, which is old English Bible talk for you got yourself in debt.

If you've gotten into debt, the Bible says, do this.

Now, listen, I had a revelation spiritually a few years ago.

I discovered God is smarter than me.

And so when God says, here's a problem, if you want to be rid of the problem, do this.

He's the Alpha and the Omega.

He's smart.

I'm listening to him.

So this is a math formula for me.

There's a problem on this side of the equation.

The other side gives me my answer.

I'm looking for this.

Y'all following me?

That's how my mind works.

I'm a math guy.

So if you're in debt, do this.

I found it.

I'm gonna be able to get America out of debt.

And I'm reading it.

It says, Give no sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids.

Deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, a bird from the hand of the fowler.

And I went, huh?

I'm sorry, God.

Animal metaphor.

I can't follow here.

I'm kind of lost.

I said, Really, you could have just told me what to do.

Gazelles?

Seriously?

This is how I pray.

He's not intimidated by me, okay?

So I did not understand.

Here's how you get out of it.

No sleep to your eyes, no slumber to your eyelids.

I get that part.

Work, okay?

My grandmother used to say that.

There's a great place to go when you're broke.

To work.

Yeah.

And so I'm, I got that part, but then deliver yourself like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter?

Lord, show me what that.

I don't understand.

And sure enough, he answered my prayer with the Discovery Channel.

I didn't know he worked through the Discovery Channel, but he does.

So I hit the Discovery Channel that night scanning channels, and there were gazelles.

They were out there gazelling around.

I thought, dude, I was just reading about you guys.

This is how you get out of debt.

Like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter.

Now you know the Discovery Channel was not there if the gazelles were there by themselves.

You know someone was there looking for lunch in all the right places.

And you know, gazelles, they have a little cheetah detector behind their ear.

When they see a cheetah or smell of a cheetah, they say, uh-oh, cheetah! Gaza wanna be and the gazelles canada run the cheetah! The cheetah is the fastest mumble on! He can go from zero to 47 miles an hour in four leaps.

Wow, this fat.

He's trying to have much.

You can't beat him.

You just gotta outmaneuver him and hope he quits.

And so here's how you get it out of that.

We gotta slow this down so we'd have time to talk.

Here's how you get out of that.

You rubbing for you! You gotta bust it! You gotta go look, he picked out a college student.

You gotta rub it! You gotta go! You gotta go, crack me to me! Honey, you can wander into debt.

You can't wander out.

You gotta get gazelle intense.

Here's an interesting thing.

Cheetah only catches the gazelle one in sixteen times.

Gazelle gets away more often than not.

You know how long we had to look for a clip where he gets away.

Gazelle only gets eaten one in 16 to 19 times.

And the cheetah is faster.

I gotta thinking about that.

Why is it the cheetah is faster, but the gazelle wins most of the time statistically?

Why is that?

Motivation.

One just wants to have lunch, the other one wants to stay alive.

Good metaphor, God.

I got it.

I gotta work at getting out of debt as if it my life depends on it.

Because financially, it does.

You can work your whole life for the man otherwise.

You can get to the end of the life, into your life, and all of your income has gone to pay payments.

And you've just been a slave.

Isn't the Bible cool?

It's cool.

It'll set you free.

So what we're figuring out here is this is not a math problem.

This is a behavior problem.

It works like this.

When you get ready to get out of debt, you use a thing called the debt snowball.

You list your debts smallest to largest, you pay minimum payments on everything but the little one, and you attack the little one with a vengeance, regardless of the interest rate.

Because why?

We're trying to get some success.

You knock out the little one and then you move the next one.

Then you knock out the next one and you move the next one.

Then you knock out the next one and you move the next one.

And you keep hammering and hammering.

And every time you knock off another one, you start to believe I can win.

And the more you believe you can win, the more you'll pour into it.

It's called hope.

And it works.

Now, there's five things you do to get out of debt.

The first thing you do to get out of debt is this quit borrowing more money.

That's hard, wasn't it?

You need to get out your credit cards and you need to light some candles and you need to go down to the store and get you some big scissors and have you a plastectomy.

Time for plastic surgery.

You gotta make a decision here.

And have the kids help you.

So you can say, I discovered freedom.

Yeah, chase this.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Home Depot, they take cash.

Victoria's Secret.

They take cash.

It's okay.

Yeah, right?

This is the deal, man.

Weird.

You're weird.

Yeah, I am, but I'm not broke anymore.

And I don't owe anybody any money.

You gotta draw a line in the sand.

Say, I'm done.

As soon as you do, God will test you.

This is a test.

You will cut up your credit cards, go outside, your tire will be flat.

Right?

Isn't that how it works?

Because he's checking.

Was you kidding?

That's what he's saying.

Were you kidding?

See, because the next thing you gotta do to get out of debt is you gotta learn to save money.

You need to save a thousand dollars as a starter emergency fund and then build an emergency fund.

So if something happens, you don't need these stupid things because you have money to fix the alternator on the car, the transmission when it goes out, to pay the house payment if you get laid off.

When life happens, you need an emergency fund.

The third thing you do is you need to sell something.

You need to amputate the Tahoe.

Stuff's gotta go.

Craigslist, new best friend.

Put the dog on eBay, the cat on Craigslist.

Everything's going.

We're out of here, baby.

You got enough junk around your house to get yourself a way out of debt.

And you don't have to sell the big stuff necessarily, but you may need to.

You can look at the numbers and you go, mm-hmm, that was stupid.

When you say that, sell it.

It's just stuff.

Here's the deal.

When you don't have any payments, you know what'll happen later?

You get money.

When you have money, you know what you can buy?

Whatever you want.

But you gotta live like no one else so that later you can live like no one else.

It's hard.

There's a price to be paid.

The fourth thing is you gotta take a part-time job or extra overtime or a new job.

Income is half of this equation.

There's income and there's outgo.

It is a great place to go when you're broke, to work.

It's a surefire money-making scheme.

Whatever you can't, you can't, you know, it's just the economy, and I had a pastor friend of mine said, he said, guy come into his office, he said, I can't find a job.

He said, Go to Home Depot, buy one of those things you put on your back that blows leaves.

Go to the rich people neighborhood.

Rich people are afraid of leaves.

You are suddenly employed.

It's the weird you got a job.

It's amazing.

Now, do I want to do that?

No, I don't want to do that.

But I'll do that before my family will go hungry.

I'll do that if I gotta do it for a period of time so I never have to do it again.

I did a lot of stuff.

I worked a lot of hours, I poured it on, we did a lot of stuff to get out that I never want to do again.

Ever.

The fifth one is prayer really works.

Pray.

Well, Dave, I don't know.

God's mad at me.

He's not mad at you.

You haven't been talking to him, he misses you.

Well, Dave, I've done some really stupid, some bad things.

Yeah, I know, I understand.

He's still not mad at you.

How many of you have enough kids you got a stupid one?

Don't raise your hand if they're sitting near you.

Mammy, think about your heavenly father.

We laugh.

And we're made in his image.

I bet he laughs.

I bet he goes, hey Gabriel, watch that.

Ooh, that's gonna leave a mark.

Oh, ooh.

You know he's doing that.

He's gotta be, right?

Not laughing at us, but he's just like, we entertain him.

We have to.

Because we entertain each other.

You watch them and they go, You did what?

You gotta be kidding me.

Don't you do that?

So he's not mad at you, he just misses you.

Here's the deal.

He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, he owns the hills.

You got a financial problem.

You ought to talk to your dad, who loves you more than anything, and he can handle it really easy.

Phone home, E.T.

Check in.

See, here's the problem.

This debt gets down on us and it holds us down and it squeezes our life out of us.

Did you know the problem with slavery?

Slavery steals your hope.

Proverbs, Proverbs 13, 12 says, Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

When you're hopeless, you're lost.

But when desire comes, it is the tree of life.

So work extra, sell some stuff, get on a written plan, go crazy, go to prayer, save money, stop borrowing, use the debt snowball and dedicate yourself to no payments.

Because think about this.

What could the people of God do for the kingdom of God if we didn't have any payments?

God, we thank you for these folks.

We ask you pour prosperity into their families, that you bless their marriages, that you cause some of the energy and the passion that you've given me to wear off on somebody tonight and they go change their lives.

Father, we just ask you to wrap your arms around those that are hurting and scared.

And you whisper gently hope to them.

Because they can do it.

I've watched the most broken of broken come back in a blaze of glory when they decided to.

Father, we thank you that that is your desire for us.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.