Episode 123 – Five Questions for Financial Discernment (Original date 2/13/23)

How should Catholics make financial decisions?

In this episode of Catholic Money Talk, Paul shares five simple questions to help you prayerfully discern financial choices through the lens of your faith.

Whether you're deciding about a home, a job change, a major purchase, or another financial step, these questions can help you slow down, remove pressure, and seek God’s will for your money.

If you want your finances to reflect your faith, this episode gives you a practical starting point.

Transcript

 Welcome to Catholic money talk where we talk about all things money and finance. And we try to do it through a lens of being Catholic, where our ultimate goal is to one day be in Heaven with the Lord. I am your host, Paul Scarfone. Thank you for being here today. So today we're going to talk about how to prayerfully discern a financial decision, and five great questions, to ask ourselves, and pray about, so that we can come to a decision that we feel the Lord is calling us to. But before we do that, let's start with a prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. We thank you for all the ways you love and bless us. Lord, fill us with a sense of peace and gratitude for all that you've done for us. I asked you to give us wisdom, and help us to be a great witness of your love and your mercy. We ask all this to the name of Jesus. Amen. And the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So why did God create us? We've talked about this, He created us to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this life, so that we can be happy with him forever in the next. So how do we know love and serve God with our finances. As Christians, we're going to face many of the same financial situations and decisions that non Christians face. And as Christians, we might actually end up making the same decision as non Christians. But we should get to that decision in a very different way. We should be able to use our faith as a lens, and our relationship with God as a guide to helping make our financial decisions. Financial discernment falls under how we know God with our finances. We want to seek His mind here. So how do we do that? Right, today, I'm going to give you a few helpful questions to consider when faced with a financial decision. Now, this isn't an exhaustive list of all the possible questions you can answer. And the Lord might actually have some unique questions for you, he probably does. After all, he has a unique call for our life. And it's important to seek His direction and guidance in prayer. Especially as it relates to some of these larger decisions. Today, we'll talk about financial decisions. But the Lord always has a unique call for us in many areas of our life. But talking about financial decisions. First, let's recognize the challenges of the current situation we are facing. There are many things that can pollute our minds when we are faced with big decisions. Like, what do I want right now? This one, it might cause us to impulse? Is there some incredible pain pinch situation that we're feeling? And we think a certain decision would give us quick relief? We don't want to make a decision in the vacuum of just our current challenge. Maybe we worry about what others think. What do I think other people expect of me? What will people think of us? You can find several spiritual and secular resources that constantly remind us to not worry about what other people think. We are here to prayerfully discern what we think the Lord wants us to do. We might wonder, What is everyone else doing? And this is a common question, especially when we have no idea of what to do. And we're desperate and we're looking for others to just give us ideas. We must remember that the Lord has a different call for all of us a different mission and work that he individually invites us all to. So this isn't a one size fits all. You might end up doing something that is the same as someone else. But just let that be a coincidence. That shouldn't be the deciding factor that drives us forward. A quick example a few years ago, I had a friend who was looking at homes it was getting pretty exhausted. In the process of trying to find the right home for his family. He asked me, How much do people spend on homes? I told them that that's the wrong question. You know, I know people have paid cash for an $800,000 home and others who spent 250,000 on a home that is drowning them in mortgage payments. These big types of decisions, as hard as they are, are so unique to us and to our situation. And what we feel the Lord is calling us to. So can we identify the pressures that we're feeling? Once we identify these pressures that we feel in or towards a certain situation, we can start to work to eliminate it. Then we feel freer and more open to hearing what the Lord is actually calling us to. Recently, one of my business clients, they've outgrown their current office space, they found what they thought could be a great solution. But as they were negotiating with the landlord, it's kind of just falling apart. As I was speaking with my client, there seemed to be a bit of desperation like this was the only option. Maybe it was the amount of time you had spent on this, this option. Maybe it was a concern for how busy the company is right now. It's only getting busier. And maybe there's just a really great desire to get this settled right now. But there was hesitation in committing to a five year lease for a space that feels like it was overpriced. And as we spoke more, I was able to ask them questions. And we found that there is affordable temporary office space that he could rent on a month to month basis that would alleviate what feels like a rushed, desperate decision right now, it would buy him time, it would get through the busy season of work. And it would allow him to slowly find new opportunities and other alternatives for his future office needs. The pain and the pressure gets relieved. And he has more time to seek wisdom from the Lord on what he should do. So once we've identified some of these challenges, right, these were just some quick questions to identify challenges to our discernment process, then we can start to deal with the actual prayerful discernment of these financial decisions. Alright, so here are five questions that we can prayerfully work through, when we're faced with some, you know, significant or major financial decisions. The first question we need to answer when prayerfully discerning a financial decision is what do I think the Lord is calling me to? Or if you're married? What is the Lord calling us to? If we try to envision laying these different options as paths in front of us? Which one do we think is the Lord calling us to take? We know the Lord is constantly drawing us to him. So which one of these paths are leading us? closer to him? Another question is, what are our goals? And we'll talk more in a later episode about how to prayerfully determine set goals. But if we know our goals, we can try to assess how does this decision impact our goals, we might easily be able to eliminate some options if they don't support the goals that we have arrived at in prayer. Here's a personal example from our life. A few years ago, when we were looking for a new home, we just couldn't seem to find anything in our price range. It was getting frustrating. Our current home was under contract. And we were swiftly approaching the date that we needed to move out of our house, we had found nothing. I felt a lot of pressure, the pressure of the unknowns, the pressure of caring for my family, and just the pressure from the weight of moving the size of the transaction all of that. I told my wife that maybe we should just look at some more expensive homes to try to find something we could afford it. And she quickly and wisely responded know, the Lord is calling us to be generous not to spend a lot on a larger home. Yeah, she was right. We had prayerfully established a goal to be generous. Part of that goal was to get a smaller mortgage and pay it off quickly. So we could be even more generous. It was easy to lose sight of the goals. When I was feeling so much pressure. We ended up looking below our original price range, found a perfect home and closed on it in three weeks. God is faithful. This story all also answers the question, how does this decision impact what we think the Lord wants us to accomplish? If we're here trying to know love and serve Him, and we know he has unique purpose for us? Let's take this question of prayer regularly. A very simple and basic question we can ask ourselves is is this a sound decision? You know, God blesses us with common sense and reason. And there is an element of risk when following the Lord. But we don't want to just wave our hands and say, Lord, I'll work it out. I trust him. No, you need to make sure your decisions are sensible and that you are thoroughly working through making these decisions in a prayerful way. You Romans 828 We know that God works all things to the good for those who love Him, and who have been called according to His purpose. The second part of that verse is so important. What purpose is God calling us to in this decision? This is where it's very helpful to have someone that you trust that can help you seek the Lord's wisdom. Sometimes a quick chat with a trusted friend, can help us see if there's any big error in our thinking, or maybe something blatantly obvious. We have overlooked. The last question. And this might be one of the more important ones is our our motivations for this pure or selfish? God is really not interested in our money. Not at all, actually. He's interested in our hearts. Our motivations and financial decisions play a big part in how we spiritually handle money. Matthew 621 For where your treasure is, there, your heart will be also our heart follows our treasure. That is why isn't it is important to prayerfully make financial decisions. Whenever I speak about tithing and generosity, I use the Scripture first. If we give our treasure, if we give our money to the Lord, our heart goes there. You know, if if we spend all of our money on on a car, right? We're going to really take care. And we're really going to care a lot about that car. If we put all of our money into an investment. I mean, we check it every day. Right? Why? Well, because where our treasure is, is where our heart goes. We need to ensure we have pure motives in prayer. Ask the Lord to reveal our motives to us. We might acquire a fantastic new perspective that helps us in our decision. Now, these five questions they are not the only questions to ask when faced with financial decisions. And through prayer. The Lord may ask you a few others. But I challenge you. If you haven't taken a financial decision to prayer, start doing it. financial decisions can easily become a source of fear or regret, that can lead to breaking a marriage apart. They can lead to addictions or other significant problems. And God doesn't want that for us. He has planned a future full of hope for us. So we must seek His plan and His wisdom in these areas. I pray that you find the Lord's will in your life, and that your prayer leads you to a better understanding of how he wants you to handle your finances. I hope this has been helpful. Thank you for listening. God bless. Thank you for listening to Catholic money talk. I hope you join us again next time. Please click subscribe in your podcast app to get notified of new episodes. God bless you and have a great day