Our FPU Story

So, we are getting the privilege of sharing our Financial Peace University testimony this week in the two sessions we have currently going at our church. In preparation, I wrote out what will probably be the long version and will get condensed, especially since my husband is the main one sharing tonight. :) Neither one of us are big public speaker types, but we won't refuse a time to share how God has been SOOO faithful to us and to give Him the glory for where we are today.

So, I thought since i had written it up anyways, I would just share it here, in hopes that it will bring encouragement to anyone that may be where we were 3 years ago, and to anyone working the Dave Ramsey plan now. Keep at it!

Our story -

Thanks for letting us take a few minutes to share our FPU story with you. We were introduced to FPU by James and Cynthia Caine, who were willing to share their story and how God was using FPU in their lives. It encouraged us and led us to join FPU, and so we hope that in the same way, God will use what He has done in our life to encourage you.

We were married in November of 2005. We both entered into our marriage with a very simple financial plan – just that we wanted some money. But we both didn’t really have much else in regards to that. We were never really careless with our finances, neither being big spenders, but we still didn’t have a handle on it. All we did know was that we wanted to be good stewards of what God had given us, so we decided to join a Crown Financial small group about 3 yrs into our marriage. We learned a lot of great biblical principles about why we should be good stewards, but left without really knowing how to get there from where we were.

At the time, we figured that because our income was greater than our monthly expenses, our bank account should be growing each month. But that wasn’t the case. In fact, there were even months we had overdraft fees. And at the time, our only emergency fund was our credit card, which we also used for large purchases to pay off over time. We did not have any savings, and definitely thought that having a car payment was just how you did things. And even though we weren’t ready to start a family at that season of our lives, I couldn’t help but worry in the back of my mind how we’d ever be at a point where we could afford an addition to our family if we couldn’t even really make ends meet, just the two of us.

Fast forward to the fall of 2008, where we had the privilege of being in a small group with James and Cynthia Caine. Once they shared their FPU story with us, Immediately I could sense this was something God wanted to do at Community, and in our own lives personally, and so FPU was implemented the following January of 2009.

For us, one of the big light bulb moments during the first few weeks of FPU was about the detailed budget. Since we had never found a budget that worked for us, I was personally pretty intimidated by this point. (Budget was a bad word around our little one-room apartment, something I believed meant that I would have to do without what I wanted.) When we got into this part of the course, and realized just what money we had been spending, we were shocked! We had no idea that we were spending so much money in some areas, and definitely would not have intentionally set aside that amount of money to go towards things like eating out, where we had nothing to show for it later (except maybe in our waistlines).  All of a sudden, instead of being something restrictive, the budget became a source of empowerment, allowing us to consciously choose where we wanted our money to go each month, making sure that it lined up with what we valued and agreed upon.  It was really a life-changing moment for us. And we were able to identify areas we could start to put some of our monthly income into paying off debt.

Now that we had a plan, we were able to really face our debt with gazelle-like intensity. But we still knew, that because we both weren’t very good with finances, that we needed God to be doing all this through us. He honored our attempts to be obedient and faithful stewards, and there was time and time again when He provided either new forms of income, or met a need through some other way.

And you know how I mentioned that little fear in the back of my head that we’d never be able to have a baby. We could see a little bit of light in the distance, knowing that the money that was now going towards debt could someday be freed up for a baby.

As a testament to God’s goodness and faithfulness, only 7 months later, we were finished with Baby Step 2 and debt-free, except for the house. And we no longer had the idea that we needed a car payment, and definitely had given up the habit of using a credit card, period, forever. Two short months after that, we were pregnant with our first child, who is now 19 months old.

Even now 3 years later, we’re still as committed to the program as we were the first few weeks. Even though it’s taken us a little bit longer than average, due to having a baby and other life events, we are excited to say we’ll be finishing Baby Step 3 in a couple of months, and will be able to start investing for our future, at the ripe old age of 30. Praise God for His faithfulness and patience with us now and in the future!

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I'd love to hear your story as well!

What's your Perspective?

This is nothing new and revolutionary. 
Well, nothing new. It can be revolutionary if we let it.

The idea starts with a question.

How much time have you spent on your knees lately?

The Lord has been speaking to me about the topics of honor and integrity lately. The importance of honoring Him - and what that really looks like in a life - and the importance of honoring others.

(Just a little fun fact - according to www.biblegateway.com, the word 'honor' is found in the Bible 211 times, at least in the NIV translation. That's a lot. Compare that to other significant topics, such as love appearing 686 times, 'forgive' 121 times, and 'pray' 367 times. Just wanted to validate that it's something God made a point to mention a few times.)

I don't know if you've ever met a person that really seemed to have the honoring God thing down, but it's pretty incredible. It's actually pretty apparent that there is something different about that person, too. It's like they walk with an understanding of the gravity of what is means to esteem others better than themselves. (Philippians 2:3, "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves.")

Their lives are characterized by a stillness, a patience that is required to truly offer people your time and attention, acknowledging that they are worth it. It illustrates the truth that God has called us to be in relationship, and that relationships are important.

They place value on the people around them.

I've been contemplating this in terms of my relationship with God.

Do I understand the gravity of what it means to live my life in a way that honors Him?

Do I consider how my actions and attitudes fall in line with what is pleasing to Him?
Do I think of what He places value on, and therefore accredit value to it as well?

And where does integrity come into all of this?

Dictionary.com states that integrity is defined as
1.) adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.
2.) the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.

To live with integrity means that we're honest - authentic - IE., no shady stuff going on in our lives that we're not really wanting other folks to know about.

No false pretenses. What you see is what you get.

I believe in order to live lives of honor, we have to get to a place of integrity first. You can't fake honor. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's called manipulation. (More on this in a later post.)

Integrity is grounded in Truth.

Integrity requires having a proper perspective.

And in order to have a proper perspective, we have to be in the right position to see correctly.

I was reminded of this today as I knelt in front of my desk at work. I don't normally spend a lot of time looking at things down there. (Just in case you are interested, there is quite a bit of dust on my computer case, paper scraps that have compiled over time, scattered randomly. I could go on, but I'll spare you.)

The point I'm getting at is that this isn't something I'm aware of on a daily basis, when I scoot my chair up to my desk to start work. I don't normally see what is under there because I am not normally positioned to see it.

But today I was led to take a minute, get on my knees, and worship. To posture myself in a way that represents honor.

And when I chose to do that, I saw something I don't normally see.

The point I'm getting at is not that the desk and random paper scraps were not important, or even what God wanted to show me.

What I mean is that when we humble ourselves, slow down and choose to position ourselves in a way that acknowledges that He is worthy of our honor, we start to see things we were meant to see.

Start to see things as they were meant to be seen.

He starts to show us stuff that He's been wanting to share with us, but our view has been too lofty, too distorted.
Maybe because we've been haven't been rightly related to Him.
Maybe we've been too busy to slow down, to take in the scenery.

Whatever the case, we weren't in position.

So, back to my original question.

How much time have you spent on your knees lately?

What have you and I been missing, what are we not seeing, because we haven't been on my knees, positioned to receive from God?

I've heard the definition before in a teaching that humility is just being properly related or "positioned" to God. He is placed in higher esteem because in truth, He is worthy of that position. It's just the facts.

God > me.

But humility isn't about degrading ourselves or thinking less of ourselves, either. We were made in the image of God and we were created by Him for Him for a purpose - fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139).

Humility is about being rightly related to God - making nothing more or less of ourselves than who He created us to be.

And once God is in His right position in our life, and we fall into our proper place, we're able to honor Him and others from a place of truth. Integrity.

Let me streamline this a little bit.

I believe in order to live lives of honor, we need integrity. And in order to have integrity, we have to be able to see things as they really are, from a proper perspective.

Humble. On our knees.

So, I believe, if I am to truly live a life of humility, as I'm called to and which is necessary in order to honor others, I need to spend a lot more time noticing the dust and random scraps of paper that I've been missing before.

It's only when I take a posture of humility and honor that I can catch a vision of
who God really is,
who I really am in Him,
and what it is He wants me focused on.

So is your life busy? Are you distracted? Do you know what the dust looks like under your desk? Your bed at home? What scraps have been finding their home in your carpet at home?

There really is something about carving some time out of your day to get away to a secret place, where you can get on your knees.

And stay there past the urge to jump back into your schedule and routine. Stay there long enough to experience His stillness and peace, to meet with Him, and to catch a glimpse of

His Perspective.