They celebrate your abundant goodness and joyfully sing of your righteousness. Psalm 145:7
“Financial freedom gives tremendous joy. There are reasons for this.
By lowering your expenses below your income, you will experience far less stress and pressure. The difference between income and expenses is margin. Margin is essentially important.
Imagine a sheet of paper without margins. It becomes unreadable. Imagine your daily agenda, full of activities with no time in between. It becomes exhausting.
Our society today lives at the edge where there is no margin. Margin is the difference between stress and rest.
Without margin, life struggles and staggers and stumbles. But when margin is present, life flows. And flowing is more enjoyable than stumbling.
If your refrigerator breaks down, you don’t. If your car needs servicing, you can go to the garage without wondering where the money is going to come from.
Having financial margin allows generosity towards others. This is one of the most rewarding of all human activities.”
Peter J. Briscoe in Financial Discipleship: Investing in Eternity (Compass Finances God’s Way, 2020) 74.
Yesterday I highlighted that Your Money Counts will be released electronically to GTP constituents in Spanish next month. I also want to report that this book, Financial Discipleship, will also be freely available in digital form for Spanish readers.
This book approaches financial stewardship and generosity from a discipleship perspective. And this excerpt from Briscoe reminds us of the vital importance of margin to create space in our budgets for generosity.
This is a great time for such conversations because we are in an inflationary environment and possibly entering a recession. Times are hard. It means we have to choose to say “no” to some things so we can say “yes” to other things to create margin.
Once we have margin, we are prepared for crisis situations and we have bandwidth for blessing others. Is it time to revisit your budget? Time to create margin by saying “no” to some things so you can say “yes” to deeper levels of generosity?