Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:00:00]:
You know, I know for some, when they think in terms of what is it, why would the people of God be thankful? Is it because you live a charmed life, you never have any struggles, you never have any problems? Or is it the reality is that we have somebody who's bigger than our problems, who's bigger than our struggles, who meets us in our everyday life, who is greater than that, then we can be thankful. Right? And so this year, as you're approaching this Thanksgiving, can we just have a heart of gratitude toward God? Right? We. We want to be able to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. That's his promise to you. If you want to celebrate that with us, we're gonna have a time together to do that Wednesday. And it's just a kind of a dessert, you know, poo poos kind of a thing. We know many of us have larger family gatherings or friendsgivings that you guys do, so we don't want to kind of make it too much. But if you just wanted to be able to with your brothers and sisters, with the.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:01:00]:
The family of God, it's a great opportunity. And we also always do. I hope that when you go that would you. That share the love of Jesus, right? Not. Not all the. Not all the laws of the Old Testament. Not all the. Not all the things that people are doing wrong.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:01:18]:
How many of you guys ever prayed for somebody and rehearsing somebody's sins before God? You know, I mean, like, oh, Lord, you know, that guy, you know, he's doing all this and he's doing all that, and it's like, you know what the Lord is saying? Yeah, I know. Right? But would we bring them before the throne of grace? Right? Asking God to move in their life, asking. Sometimes, you know, people, we try to meet our need to be honest. You know what I think sin is in many ways? It's trying to meet legitimate needs in illegitimate ways. We just don't. They just don't know how to meet the needs. That's real needs. You know, God knows that when.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:01:57]:
That you need love. God knows that you have financial need. God knows that you have a need for encouragement. And God knows those things. It's just that sometimes when we just. They don't know how to do it. We need God to open our eyes, lead us down the way, shine his light in our darkness. And then all of a sudden, you know, then life can turn around, right? Then just a grace can flow in people.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:02:22]:
And so be mindful that when you go to your. Your family Gatherings or get together with your friends, Would you be able to share a little bit of the love of Jesus? Maybe just share what God's been doing in your life, you know, and remind them that God really does love and care for them regardless of where they're at. Right, because it's not the judgment of God that draws people to his kindness. It says it's the kindness of God that draws people to change and turn. And so that's just a reminder for us. Hey, this evening we're continuing our series, though, that we started, like, actually four weeks ago that we just call Money Matters. And part of that is because I'm glad that God is aware of what real life is like, that we all live in a world that although God is good and God is sufficient, but that we feel we face pressures from some of these things. And over the last month and a half or maybe over the last couple years, we've all been feeling that probably on a different level.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:03:28]:
And so we wanted to talk about this, the fact that God is aware and God is still able to help us in our times where we're trying to trust God, where we feel that pressure. And so we started this series by just talking about, in God we trust, right? And we put up that dollar bill, and then, you know, it's almost like the warning sign that would be on a pack of cigarettes. Hey, warning, this thing can be dangerous for your health. So I think that God has ordained sovereignly to put on that bill that says, you know what? It's so easy to put our trust in money, but we put our trust in God, right? And so we talked about that. We talked about the second one is that instead of just trying to act your age, that we need to act our wage, right? And. And sometimes we need to make some of those adjustments. Last week, we talked about how to get on God's side of the equation with money and the fact that he's promised to be a helper. But sometimes we need to say that God does have some promises that are set with conditions.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:04:32]:
It is sort of like, if you do this, then see, will I not do that? And he says this. Test me in this one of the. Not one of. It's the only one that I know of where God invites us to test him, right? Because it's normally a negative thing, but in this instance, because God knows, challenging the God of money, he says, test me. Who's stronger, the God of money or me? And so this evening, we're gonna finish out. Not finish out. We finish next Week, actually. But we're gonna round the corner on managing your ins and your outs.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:05:08]:
In other words, what comes in, what goes out. And I'm not talking about this subject, by the way, because I'm a certified financial planner, right? I have talked to certified financial planners, and there have been losses as a result of some of that. Sometimes it works out that way, but sometimes, you know, there are people who. That's their thing, right? They help us navigate some of these situations. But the good news is this, that God is ultimately our greatest financial planner. And so we're going to start by reading together just this promise. And I want it to be cemented in your mind, in your memory, that you hear it when the enemy whispers, when the fear starts to creep, when you're not sure how things are going to work out, that you hear God's voice, God's promise. And so we're just going to read Philippians 4:19 together.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:06:03]:
Would you be kind? Let's stand in reverence for God and let's declare with our own mouths the promise of God. It says it like this. Ready? Let's read it. And my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus. Now to our God and Father, be glory forever and ever. Right? We declare that God is not just good. He's been good to me and he has an ability to. To meet me at my point of greatest need.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:06:36]:
And he does it not because I've figured everything out. He does it not because I've always bat a thousand. He does it out of his riches and out of his goodness and out of his power. So before you see that, just turn to your neighbor, says, I'm glad that you got to read that tonight. And then you can have a seat, right? I'm glad that we got to remind one another tonight. Right? But it also says this. It also says this in Proverbs 29:18. It says this.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:07:02]:
Where there is no vision, the people are unrestrained, let's say the word unrestrained. You know, when you're unrestrained with your emotions, sometimes we just call that person emotional, right? When you're unrestrained with your sense of adventure, sometimes we call that person kind of the adrenaline junkie, Right? When you call. When you find a person who's unrestrained in their financial dealings, you call that person broke. No, but you know, there's different things that can happen, right? And so there's this aspect. It's saying that if we don't have a vision, we don't know what God is trying to accomplish in our life or neither do we have a vision. Sometimes it's hard to restrain and put controls in our life. But we're not called to live an uncontrolled life and just emotional at every whim because many of us know emotions are powerful, just not always truthful. Right? And so he says this, that the people are unrestrained but happy is he who keeps the law.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:08:08]:
And so I hope you have a vision for your financial life. Some of that sometimes maybe we're in a situation. It starts with the fact that I talked to some people just this weekend and just seeing that some of it's like I'm. We're trying to get to that place where we're going to be able to get our own, you know, our own house, our own townhouse, right. For some of us it's about starting your own business. I've talked to some people. Some people it's about paying for their kids education. For some of us it's about how to be generous.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:08:39]:
Some of us it's about how to honor God. And for sometimes some of us it's for retirement. Different things along the lines. But wherever your vision is that there are some things that we need to understand, there's some priorities that God has for us to achieve that vision. And sometimes the thing is we can't actually balance our ins and our outs because we got more outs than ins. I don't you guys know what I'm talking about. You guys ever been in that place where there's more month at the end of the money, Right? And so we find that that does happen right from time to time for some of us that we've been in that for some of us it's not just time to time. It's been kind of like your whole life.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:09:22]:
And the reality is for some of us it's also been that way for our parents lives or maybe even the generation before. But if that's you, would you know that there is hope? Right? There's hope. Do me a favor, turn to your neighbor and just say there's hope. It's not because hope is the strategy, but the one behind the strategy. He's the source of hope. Right? And so we're going to talk about first six priorities in dealing with debt. Because the Bible has a lot to say about dealing with debt. One of those things it first says is this in Romans 13, 8.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:09:58]:
We'll read that together. What does it say? Owe no one anything except to love each other. In other words, we're called to be able to fulfill and pay our debts. But the call to love you can never completely fulfill because there's always going to be another that you owe, right? There's always going to be a next time. There's always be another person. And so he says this, though we are called that if you have debt, that we're called to pay what we owe. And so the reason that that call is there because we're a people of our word, right? We're people of honor. We're becoming that.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:10:39]:
We're learning how to be that as the children of God. And so he says, be mindful about not getting into debt. We had talked about that. Not just to get into debt to finance a lifestyle, right? Not to get into debt. We understand that sometimes there is a means of getting into debt. Usually that when in our culture it's getting some place to live, right? That's kind of like that one aspect where it tends to increase in value. 10 I say because it's not guaranteed, right? We need to be aware, but that's that tendency. But there's six things we want to look at this evening in dealing that when finances get upside down.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:11:21]:
And then we're going to talk about some things about how to do that and how do we invest for the future, right? And so first thing is this. If you're in that place where you've already spent more money than the month, the first thing we do is we pray. Right? First thing you do is pray. Praying is not the last resort. Right? Like in the movies, right? What happens in the movies? All this horrible thing. It's like. It's like a science fiction movie. This asteroid is gonna destroy the earth.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:11:52]:
What are we gonna do? Oh, all we have left to do is pray. In other words, like, we tried everything else and exhausted it. And since we don't have any other thing, I guess we'll pray. That's the way the culture sees it. God says no, Prayer is not your last resort. It's your first choice. Right? It's the first step. Get God involved in the equation with you.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:12:15]:
In Philippians 4. 6, it says, don't worry about anything, but in everything, let's say everything. Does that include debt? Yeah. Does that include fear? Right. Does that include those troubled times that you face? Yes. He said, in everything, through prayer and. And petition with thanksgiving. Present your requests to God.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:12:35]:
You and I, we're supposed to pray about everything. There's nothing off limits, right? Nothing so big that God cannot do it and nothing so small that God doesn't want to hear it right? And so because nothing is impossible with God, we can ask for his help. Isn't that great, getting God's side on the equation? You know, like I've, when I was younger, you know, you get in trouble every once in a while on the, what do you call on the playground? I don't know about you guys remember those days, right? And I was a small guy back then too, right? And so there have been times it's like, oh, you know, we're getting into this trouble and I'm feeling intimidated. And all of a sudden I saw this one guy goes like, oh, okay, that's all right, that's all right. Kind of walked away. And you know why that was? Because I had an older brother, right? And he was behind me. And I didn't realize he was behind me, but he didn't see me. Or he did see me, but he saw past me to who's behind me.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:13:33]:
When we pray that what we're telling our finances, what we're telling the debt, what we're telling the enemy is, you know what, you see me, I know you see me, but do you see who's behind me? Do you see who's in front of me? Do you see who's leading me? So we need to pray, we get God involved. And then this is what it says, that when we do that, that it becomes the Lord's battle. The battle is the Lord's right? It's not just you. Let's get God in our equation for that. Here's the second thing. Second thing is this though. We also have to develop a debt free mindset. Now.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:14:12]:
I know for some of us that maybe that as we've been going through these things that somebody had told me, it's like, you know, I never had this kind of a financial discussion before and literally there's been some people says because I've always kind of been struggling with finances and my parents, they've always kind of been struggling and their parents before them. And so that when we're in debt, it's just kind of natural. It just, it's normal, right? It's normal to struggle. And that's just the way that it is. And when I hear that, it reminds me of when after we got married, my wife and I got Rika and I got married and I was having to adjust because I had been a single guy and I hadn't been focusing like on the career side, money side, right? In the sense, because I was in the ministry, I was doing missions, doing different things and I Could struggle. I could live off 11,000. I could live off 12,000, because it didn't matter to me. I go on a mission trip.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:15:12]:
I can sleep on the concrete. I could. I can sleep like we got before in Indonesia. I'm just sleeping on the wood. It doesn't matter, right? But when you get married, right? This is what you think. I cannot make my wife do that. I cannot make my kids do that. I mean, I didn't really have kids, right? But I started to feel that pressure.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:15:30]:
Anybody feel that pressure? All of a sudden you start thinking about that. I started feeling that pressure. And I was doing commission sales, and I was doing well, but it's just that every month, you start from zero. Make sense. Straight commission. I don't sell. I don't make money, right? And so I guess there just was this cumulative thing. I started to feel this pressure.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:15:56]:
Every once in a while, I had this pain or whatever in my side. And, you know, like, I had all this stuff, and literally, I went to doctors for all this pain. And part of that is because I had a brother who died. Died of cancer when he was 23, right? So you start thinking like, oh, man, it's just cancer, right? Some of us, you get a headache. Is this brain cancer? No, it's not brain cancer. Come on, let's just be realistic. But when you have that in your family, you have these things, sometimes that goes on, right? So I did all that stuff, and you know what? All those things were clean bill of health. And then after a while, I started to get.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:16:30]:
I thought I was getting a heart attack, right? And I remember talking to my mom about that. I did. I went to the. I went to the hospital. They did the EKG and all that, and it was fine. And I was describing it to my mom, and my mom just said to me, glenn, all that is is anxiety. There's this anxiety, you know? And then when you got that thing, you thought that that's. That's what they call a panic attack.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:16:56]:
And you know what? I have that, and uncle has that, and grandma had that. And you know what? You know what? I said, well, I don't want it, right? I don't want it, right? And so some of us hear that, you know, when it comes to prayer, we think like, anybody hear that? Name it, claim it, right? It's like, hey, I want to be. I want to be rich. I want to have a Mercedes. Name it and claim it, right? This is the opposite of that. You name it and you unclaim it, right? You said, lord, this has been. This has been in my life. This has been in my family.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:17:28]:
This has been my experience. I name it and I repent or I renounce it. I unclaim it, right? I'm not destined for debt, right? I'm destined to be favored and blessed and to be a blessing. That's God's destiny for me. That's God's destiny for you. In order for you to be a blessing, you know what, you have to get blessed first, right? You cannot. I'm not going to pour this out because there actually is coffee in here. But if there was nothing, it doesn't matter how hard I pour, there's nothing to give.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:18:04]:
You see, God sees you as a conduit for blessing, not just a container for blessing. But unless he fills your cup, how are you going to pour in anybody else's cup, right? And so God wants to bless us. So we need to develop a mindset that says, you know what? I want to have a mindset about being debt free, right? Because if we don't, we need to change our mind about that. That's not how God sees you. You're not destined for this aspect. And so in Romans 12:2, he says it like this, do not be conformed to this age. But let's read together. Ready? Begin.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:18:44]:
But be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing and perfect will of God. If God's will for you was always to be broke and in debt, how good would that be? How pleasing would. That wouldn't be pleasing at all, right? That's because it's not God's will, right? And sometimes the enemy wants us to be identified by our greatest weakness, right? Some of us, this is an area of weakness in our life. You can have a weakness, but that's not your identity, right? You can have a weakness, that's not your identity. Your identity is a son of God or daughter of God, right? You're blessed. But he's saying this. So you got to change your mindset. You got to renew your mind.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:19:37]:
God wants to bless me, and so I need to learn how to be blessed. I need to learn how to be blessable. I need to learn how. And I've said it before, you've probably heard me say it. It's sort of like this. If God has the football and the football is the blessing, and he wants to throw it to you, you need to be in the position to catch the blessing, right? So sometimes what we're talking about in these aspects, how do we get into the position to catch the blessing? Because we got to run the pattern God has for us. Right? That's what the scriptures talk about. And so one of those things, although he talks about debt a lot, and I don't know if they had the kind of commercial rates that we have today, but that you have to learn how to pay off consumer debt, that if you want to be able to get out of debt, often the first thing that we need to start with is my consumer debt.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:20:36]:
What is consumer debt? Credit cards. Right. It's the kind of pay any day kind of a loan. Right. That kind of thing. And some of us. Why do we need to do that? Because it's often the largest interest rate that is legally able to be charged. Right.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:20:55]:
28% I've seen. Right. 26%. You know, that is an incredible rate. And so we need to understand that if you're going to pay something down, sometimes it starts with there's two things that you want to look at. You want to look at the size of the loan and you want to look at the interest rate, right? And so there's a couple things that sometimes people say this. I have the solution. I have the solution.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:21:22]:
It came in the mail today. You know what this says? I can just write a check right now and, and do a consolidation loan. And I take care of all these bills, right. And I just pay this one bill. And if this is the reason why that's often a huge. Not a blessing, but almost like a curse, why is that? Because if you still have the same habits that got you into that place, you're not solving your problem. You're compounding your problem. Because if you cannot pay your credit card bill, you pay this off, but you cannot pay your credit card bill off.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:22:00]:
What you're doing is you're actually increasing the amount that you owe every month. Right? And so here's the thing. How do we do that? Okay. That part about getting cash flow is there's only two ways to do that. One is to increase income. Right. And the second is to decrease expenses. Right? Now, sometimes you cannot maybe just get it in a month.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:22:25]:
I understand, but those are two things, right? Sometimes we need to think in terms of that. I'll work an extra shift, I'll work some extra hours, I'll trim on the things, and we'll talk about that in a little bit. But I'm going to trim certain things out of our expenses. But if you get to this place that you want to choose either the highest interest rate or Sometimes, Sometimes you can choose it like this, and it's a little counterintuitive, but sometimes you start with the smallest debt possible, right? And why do we do that? Because it'll build momentum. And so I saw this happen in my own life that when we got married, I bought a car because I needed a car. I was doing sales, right? Doing all these things. And I'm all over the island and my wife is here, she's going to work too. And so she came from Japan.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:23:22]:
She didn't bring a car with her, right? So that's pretty hard. So I gave her my car. And so I needed to buy another car, right? It was a used car, but when it came to that, I was paying it off. But I also had got some credit card debt when we got married, and the engagement ring and all this, this is before I studied this, right? Before I learned God's side of the equation. And so I little bit of debt and I had student loans and all these things from going to seminary. Seminary is private school, right? Some of us know what that's like, right? But here's the thing, what did I do? I started the car loan was actually the smallest loan. And so we got this aspect we just put down and we paid that as much as we could. And I still had to pay my student loan, right? Still had to pay my credit card.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:24:13]:
But then the next thing is that car loan got paid for. All of a sudden, now what do I do? It's like, whoo hoo, now we can go out, right? Like, no, no, no, that's not what happened, right? What we needed to do was then I'm already paying this student loan. And to be honest, it was. I was surprised it was higher interest rate than my car loan, and it was a larger amount. But what I did was I took what I was paying on that, and then I took what I was paying in the car loan and I put it on that student loan. And the next thing I know, in a year, that thing was paid off. And I never could have imagined I would be able to do that. And then when we did that, then I took that and did on the credit card thing, and that was paid off within a few months.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:24:59]:
And so sometimes there's this aspect that you can. You have to prioritize at times how you pay off. And it's always, almost always important to pay off your consumer debt first. That's really like lifestyle stuff, right? That's often involved in that. And so here's the fourth thing I'd say The fourth principle, or priority is you got to take inventory of what you owe and what you own, right? What you owe and what you own. Proverbs 27:23 says it like this. Know well the condition of your flock and pay attention to your herds. In ancient terms, what this is saying, in modern terms, we would say maybe for this, know the condition of your flock, know your assets, know your expenses, and understand your cash flow, right? That's what it's talking about.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:25:57]:
And so you need to list that out. List that out. And when you come to this place about looking at what you owe. Oh, often in business they talk about two kinds of costs, right? One is fixed, and some of us know this. And one of those are variable. Now, what does that mean? Like, fixed means it's basically the same every month, right? Your mortgage is like that, or your rent is like that, right? Your rent doesn't go, it's 1,000 today and 1,500 next month, right? If that's the case, you better talk to your landlord, right? Make sure look at the agreement. But here's the thing is those things are the same. Housing insurance, stuff like that, right? Sometimes it's subscriptions, right? It's the same, some predictable bills, right? And the variable things is things that change from time to time.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:26:52]:
It's probably like what you eat for going out, right? Or your entertainment, right? That's up and down, right? Food, gas, travel, right? Health and beauty stuff. I've known some people that they gotta invest, right? Because, you know, like, to be honest, like, I know that I have one of my friends that his wife insisted on getting her hair done and the makeup, and it was like several hundred dollars a month. And I said, are you sure that you want to do that? And this is what he said. Well, if the house needs painting, you paint it. No, I'm kidding. I'm just joking. But I didn't say that. I said he said that.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:27:40]:
But, you know, we think like that, right? But here's the reality is that sometimes those things that are variable, what they really actually mean is that the fixed costs are your commitments, right? The variable costs are really your choices, right? So you're already committed on some of these things about where you live, you're already committed on. Can they be changed? Yeah, they can be changed, but it usually involves a lot more right? To change that. But variable cost, your choices, you can often kind of deal with these things relatively quickly. Now, the. And I'll just say this, that although we're supposed to pay all of our debts Sometimes literally, you don't have that capacity at the end of the month. I know. I've been in that situation before. Right.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:28:32]:
But. And some of us know what I'm talking about. What do you do if you're in that place? I cannot even pay everything all at once. You got to prioritize the necessities first, right. You got to prioritize the necessities first. Pay your rent. Right. Pay your rent.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:28:52]:
Pay your food. Right. Pay your utilities. Right. If you need your vehicle as a mode of income, because I'm a Uber Eats Delivery, I'm a. Yeah, you got to pay those things, right? But what is very easy to say, you know what? I'm going to cancel certain things, like subscriptions like Netflix, like maybe YouTube prime or premium or whatever that thing is called. Or, you know, the thing about, like, you know, I'm not gonna go out to eat. I can make coffee at home.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:29:29]:
You know, like when every once in a while we'll go and get coffee outside. My wife and I just like what we do on a date, right. Like on our days out. Like, we just, like, we like going to coffee shops and all that. But when things have been tight, you know the difference between going to Starbucks or 6 bucks or whatever that's called that today? It used to be the joke was four bucks. Now it's like six bucks, I think, but it's ridiculous. And I can make that for pennies on the dollar. Even as expensive as coffee is right at home, there's different things.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:30:03]:
Like, I have a friend that he eats out, right? So often it's because he doesn't cook. And this person not in the room because there's somebody else. I'm not talking about you, but when I had to tell my friend, I said, you know, I know that you're struggling. If you would just buy groceries, you will spend like a quarter of what it is and you'll eat better. You go to McDonald's today, you can eat. Literally, you can eat a steak, right. If you cook it at home. And so we talked about some of those things.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:30:42]:
But you got to take inventory of what you owe and look at those things that are variable, the things that you can choose. Because sometimes we have to intentionally, some sense lower our standard of living so that we can take care of some of these things that. To get our cash flow right. Right. We have to do that because you cannot keep going deeper and deeper and deeper in debt without any consequence unless you're the federal government. But. And now we looked that, you know, What? That's not even true, right? Over this last month, right? That's not true, and it has never been true. But here's that aspect that sometimes we put a hold on trips, we put a hold on extra stuff, we celebrate, you know, we can celebrate without like, going, you know, blowing the bank out.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:31:36]:
But here's the second thing is that you can do well. You got to take inventory of what you own. Because sometimes we have things that we own that are valuable, but we don't need them any longer, right? And so if you're in that place, sometimes you need to be in the place where you can convert what you own into something that helps you to pay down your debt. Now, I'm going to say this, that if you own a home, and I say own, I mean, at least you're paying a mortgage, right? If you're paying a mortgage, and let's say if you're in a townhouse, I do want to say this, that you got to prioritize this. In addition to the actual payment, you got to prioritize your maintenance fees. If you are in a townhome, and there is a reason why you never roll that, because you are part of a community, often, you know, dozens and dozens of other people, right? If not more than that. And so if you do not pay, you know what happens? You jeopardize everybody else about them being able to make their payments for maintenance in the building, right? So you know what maintenance associations do. If you roll that, they quickly call an attorney, right? And they file stuff and they penalize you.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:33:07]:
And the interest rates, I've seen people go from owing, like this dispute over $600 become $3,000, like in the course of. Of a month because of the legal fees and the penalties. And then the discussion of that, the next thing we do and we're talking about print, and he didn't really kind of get a hold of that. I said, you got to pay that. And the next time it's 12 grand. If you live in an association, you cannot roll that maintenance fee because it's one of those things. Even if you declared bankruptcy, they still get their money, right? So it's one of those things. You do have to prioritize that.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:33:53]:
Now, I was talking to a friend once. He came up and he owed about $7,000. He needed to make the payment. And we hadn't seen him for a little while because the people that he owed the money to wasn't like a credit card company, but was somebody who doesn't send you a notice but they kind of rearrange the shape of your face, right? So. And he came to me and he didn't know what to do. And he was asking, hey, can the church help? And it's like, I'm sorry, brother, we cannot, like cover your gambling debts. You know, this just, it's not responsible. This is God's money.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:34:33]:
We cannot. I don't think God says that this is what we do. But the reality is, I know you're rolling around a 30 grand vehicle. Could you do what you need to do in a car that costs 8 to $10,000? Because I know you have a kid, right? And so you don't want to be like, get broke down and all that. And he's like, oh, but no, but like I saved for this thing and I did this thing and he had some emotional thing and, and you know what? He looked more rugged and cool, like rolling around in the big SUV than he would like the Toyota Corolla, right? So he had emotional attachment to it. But I said, do you want to have emotional attachment to your vehicle or do you want your face to be attached to the rest of your body? No. Right. Like sometimes it's like we have to look at what the cost is to not hold on.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:35:36]:
To hold on to the things that we shouldn't hold on. And you know, he eventually humbled himself, right? He eventually humbled himself, got out of debt, got out of trouble, start taking care of different things, but you have to take care of the debt. I've been in other places where you guys have got loan sharks, and he's saying, I need to honor God and all that. And to be honest, I actually told this guy, you know what, that fact that you got money from this loan shark guy, God wants you to pay that back. Not simply because you can get injured or whatever the guy can, but because it's a commitment you made, right? You know, honor that and then honor the Lord from your thing, pay that back. God knows what's going on. And you know, he was able to. And God, God started to move in ways in his life and so in his financial aspects, Right.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:36:31]:
And so number five though is also establish a spending plan. Establish a spending plan. Sometimes it's called a budget, right? Sometimes it's like knowing how much you spend because you know how much you make, you know what is going out. And sometimes we're asking in that aspect, how can I do it for less or do I really need it? Right? How can I plan my spending? Sometimes we're considering that, you know, Extra income, those kinds of things. And when it comes to, I think making an extra income, don't you know, it is important at times to make that kind of money, but at the same time, can we be mindful is that you don't want to do something that will sacrifice, you will sacrifice your physical or your spiritual health to do it. Because I've seen people that get in such desperate things that you never see them. And to be honest, after a while, spiritually they're not doing well. And after, because they're not spiritually doing well, that they're trying to compensate for the stress with other things than their connection with God.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:37:35]:
They don't have the peace, they don't have the anxiety. So they chemically or substance wise start to moderate their emotional health, right? And all of a sudden it's hard to be on God's side of the equation. And so it is an important thing at times to increase our income. But the thing is that we need to be mindful not at the expense of your spiritual vitality, right? Because if that happens, sometimes the cost is so much higher. I'd say this, this is the last thing on this is even though you don't know how long sometimes it's going to take. It took me a few years to get completely out of debt. And so like we're right now in a situation besides our mortgage, right? We don't have any other debt, right? And it's been that way for a while. But it took me a little bit to get there and I don't know how long it will take you if you're in that situation.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:38:35]:
This is all I know is that if you're faithful, God is always faithful. And sometimes God is faithful, not sometimes he's always faithful, right? But we just, when we meet that condition, God begins to move in ways. And so don't give up, right? If you're in that place, don't give up. Even when it seems like it's taking a while, it's taking longer than you'd like. Don't quit, don't give up, right? Because Galatians 6,9 says it like this. Can we read that together? Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don't give up, right? And so we need to persevere at times and that we, we get refined sometimes by the things that we suffered, right? It says Jesus learned obedience by the things he suffered. It says in the book of Hebrews, if Jesus needs to learn obedience by the things he suffered how much more than we do, right? And you know, sometimes the reason why I think it takes so long to get through, if you've ever been through a bankruptcy, you know, it takes seven years for you to be able to re establish certain kinds of things. And I know sometimes people get discouraged, you know, after a few years it's like, why am I paying so much for this mistake? Because this is what, this is why I think God allows it.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:40:00]:
Because there's some things that in order for us to go so deep in us that we don't go back to that old habit, you don't develop that discipline in a week, you don't develop that discipline in a month or a year. At times sometimes there needs to be just kind of doing those reps for years and then we develop that habit. So we say this, you know what? Never again. Never again. When my appetite is, my eyes are bigger than my pocketbook, I say never again. Right? And so I learn how to live within my means. I learn how to act my ways. So that's part of that makes sense, right? And so on the other aspect is managing your ins and outs.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:40:50]:
This is managing our out. But we need to manage the things that we take in and that's saving and investing. And there's four priorities here. It's because saving and investing is about making money work for you. So much of life is you spend making money, but it's like you work to make money, but make your money work for you. Right? We need to make money work for us. And so there's four principles for these things, right? So the first one we talked about before was just putting aside money for an emergency, you know, for emergencies, right? An emergency fund of some ways. And a lot of financial analysts say anywhere between three to six months, right? Be able to do that because you know, like all of a sudden you go to go to work and all of a sudden that, you know, I don't know if you ever started the car and then you hear this weird noise and then you see all this water and oil coming out the bottom of the car.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:41:43]:
You go, oh my goodness, this is going to take a little bit of money, right? This is not, this is not just change my oil after a while. So we need that, that wherewithal. We talked about that, that, that you know, even the scriptures say that, that you know, like that's what saving is for. That's why the ant goes and, and collects. It says from the beginning, from he, he collects in the, the harvest. And even when it's not right. So consider the ant, he says, so we set aside some of that money, right? But the second thing is that we ought to get to this place. We need to set aside some money for investing for the future.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:42:23]:
Now, putting aside money in an emergency fund is savings, but putting aside for investment is different, right? And so if we think about it like what it says in Proverbs 31, where we read about that usually often around Mother's Day, we might think about it, right? Or you're going to write your wife some kind of a card, or you know, that you think, oh man, you're a virtuous woman and that's a powerful thing. But in Psalm 30, not Psalm, Proverbs 31, this is what it says about this woman. And it starts by saying, hey, she's very virtuous, right? She's amazing. And it says, she's a wife of noble character. She's more precious than jewels, right? If you're with your spouse, you're with your girlfriend, you're with your wife today, you agree with that? Just grab their hand, squeeze that, squeeze their hand, Just let them know, right? So, and then, ladies, you can squeeze your husband's hands, but not with the fingernails. So let's not do that. But she rewards him with good, not evil, all the days of her life. And then it says this in verse 13, she selects wool and flax and works with willing hands.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:43:40]:
What is that talking about? She's making an income, right? She's working, she's selling, right? It's some of that probably is for clothes for the. Her family. Other things though, it's just to provide an income. But then it goes on and it says, you know, she's like a merchant ships that bringing her food from far away. That kind of sounds a little bit more hyperbole, a little bit. But then 15 says this. She rises while it is still night and provides food for her household and portions for her female servants. We don't have female servants.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:44:14]:
But man, this is my wife, you know, I've seen her like getting stuff for the kids because they have a game the next day, day, or it's the school for lunch that she's preparing. She gets up early. She does those things, right? That when you have the game, making spam musubi. She used to make spam musubi and the kids used to sell it at school. The kids used to sell it at school and that she. They would get, you know, it's almost like drug you get, you know, they would come up like you get, you get musubi. It's like I, it's like, and they, because my wife, she makes the BAAM musubi. And you know, we used to use that money for like vacation sometime, right? That, that's what we would do with that, that, that musubi money.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:44:57]:
And so it was kind of that one of those things, right? So that my wife, I, I, she, she would do that. But then it goes on. It says this, that she evaluates a field and buys it. She plants a vineyard with her earnings. In other words, she hasn't just saved, she's invested the money. And what does that mean? That, it means that you intentionally put money into something that will increase in value or increase your income, right? So that's an investment versus the savings. The last I checked, I think my bank of Hawaii savings account was giving me 0.02%, 0.2% interest rate. You know what that is? That's like next to nothing, right? It's like, and so it's like literally right next to nothing, this park, right next to nothing.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:45:58]:
But like, you know that. But so it's savings. It's just in case, in case something happened, right? In case the car doesn't start, in case somebody had an accident, whatever is right. And so investment is different. Investment is making your money work so that you have something for either some other goal and hopefully not just a lifestyle goal, right? Not just because I want to get the $40,000 car, right. Hopefully it's not for that, but something like, you know, your retirement, your kids, whatever, that kind of a thing. So we're investing for the long term and not a short term perspective, right? Not a short term horizon. It's not for consuming.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:46:40]:
Right now, some of us, when we think of investments, we want something with the highest return, right. And the lowest risk, and it is easily converted into cash quickly. You call that the perfect investment. You also call that a fantasy, right? Because there's no perfect investment, like, right. That you cannot get something that gives the highest rate of return, right? Like, you know, it gives you 100% return, right? Gives you 100% return. And it gives it to you in six months. You know, if you call that, you don't call your broker, you call the cops, because that's probably illegal, right? That's just basically not how you want to invest, right? And so this is where now using time as a tool, interest works against us when we owe. Interest works for us when we invest.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:47:37]:
And so time is either a tool for investing or if you Consume it now. All of a sudden, time is not working for you. And so sometimes time, it seems like it's an enemy of ours, right? When we consume all we have because, oh, man, it's going to seem like it takes forever to get out of debt. And so we need to look at that, right? So this is investment. So we set aside some money for investment. Then when you invest, you need to diversify to avoid loss or risk. Ecclesiastes says it like this. Give a portion to seven or even to eight for you don't know what disaster may happen on earth.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:48:20]:
Maybe another way to say it would be don't put all your eggs in one basket. Right? Like I mentioned about that guy who put all his money into Bitcoin. And when Bitcoin crashed, he literally drove his car right off the bridge because he put it all in one thing. And so we diversify, we put it in more than one thing. And I had mentioned, because sometimes, like your trusted advisor, this guy told me this aspect. Glenn, this is. And he was a certified financial planner. And he says, glenn, you got to put your money in this thing.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:48:59]:
And he's like, let me do this then. Okay. You know, sign over some stuff. And so we put some money in the account, and then I put it in this account, and then this thing went bankrupt because it was suffering from embezzlement, right? And basically I lost most, most all of it. Right. What if I had put everything I had into that thing? Was it giving great returns? Previous to that? It was. It was given like 10, 12%, right? So he's saying this. You cannot lose until I lost pretty much all of that.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:49:37]:
But thankfully, that's not the only thing that I had. Right? Because if that was the only thing that I had, I would be pretty bummed out about it. I was already bummed out about it. But we need to know that. So, you know, sometimes we need to understand that you're not going to kind of kill them all on everything. And that's why you diversify right now, like, I'm not going to tell you what to invest in. Please consult that certified financial planner. Not the guy I was talking about, but like somebody.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:50:07]:
No, but somebody who knows what they're doing. Somebody who knows you. And it's. It's probably the best to do that. But here's some concepts to understand. In Ecclesiastes 5:13, he says this. There's a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. Riches were kept by the owner to his hurt.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:50:27]:
And those Riches were lost, right, In a bad venture. And he is the father of a son, but he has nothing in his hand. And you know, like that's. That we want to avoid that. We want to avoid that. You get to the end and you worked hard, you gained all this money and you put it in this cannot fail, get rich quick plan. And you know what? So often those things, they look great because it's planned to look good for the time being, but it's unsustainable, right? Sometimes because it's not legal, sometimes because it's just kind of structured in that way. Can you do that in certain aspects? You know, you can recover even if you made one of two of those things, you can recover if you didn't put it all in that, right? And so how do you decide, right? How do you decide what to put in? One of those tools that's helpful is to understand the rule of 72.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:51:29]:
Let's say this rule of 72, write down on your notes if you. Some of you guys, you already know this, but like if you're not sure, right? 72 divided by interest rate, right? 72 divided by interest rate will tell you this, that if you had put your money in a high yield interest saving, that gave us, let's say, 4% interest rate. I just looked at CPB. They were giving like a local company, right? It's not like a mainland company, not like an Internet bank. Some of you guys have different comfort level. But it says that 72 divided by 4 equals 18. What does it say at 4% interest in 18 years, you will double your money given that interest rate, right? So if you have this kind of a situation, you can at least say, you know what, at least my money's making something, not 0.02% right now. @ the same time, you probably cannot access that money in the course of an emergency.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:52:33]:
Because if you did after six months or eight months and you have a term that you got to let that in for at least a year or two years or something like that, you would forfeit your interest. That's why you have savings, right? So that you can draw from that the investment. If it's a 4%, it'll double in 18 years. If you got 6% return is going to double in 12 years. If you had a 12%, like that's a great return, right? It's going to double in six years. I mean, you can make real money for your future, for your retirement, for your kids, for that. If you use it for the down on your house Whatever that case, right? If you. Every once in a while I've heard people make like crazy 20%, right? It's going to double in 3.6 years, right? So these are investments and it's just so that you evaluate, right? So you probably don't want to put everything in like a 20% thing because it often has a little more volatility, right.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:53:46]:
And so you need to ask yourself sometimes some questions, right? Like why am I making the investment? And also am I creating anxiety for myself in making this assessment investment? Right. And the other thing is this. Can I just say this? It's like if you are married, please don't bet the farm on anything without your spouse's approval. Have agreement. And my wife and I, when we have something, even a big purchase or whatever, I'll never. I've seen people just roll up at home with a brand new Mustang. You know how I know? Because the wife tells me, right? Like, you know what my husband did? And I was like, oh man, I'm so sorry, or whatever. Like, did you guys talk about it? No, he did that.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:54:46]:
I'll never do that. Right, so we'll discuss it. If we need to make a large purchase, we need to make some kind of a shift at investment or something like that. It's not like I have a ton right. Of that, but I make sure that we have agreement first. Because what happens if there's no agreement if something goes sideways? Oh my gosh, I told you so, right? That kind of a thing. But that agreement is God's protection over you, right? To have that discussion. And so, yeah, so these are just some basic principles.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:55:25]:
Again, it's not about like, it's not investing one on one class or anything, but it hopefully helps you to manage your ins and your outskirts. And I'm going to say this, this is the last one is that we also need to be mindful in investing when we diversify our investments. Some of those are, you know, the kind of vehicles. Some of you guys put some of them in stock and a little bit of mutual fund or whatever that you can, you can have, you know, like some, like bonds or different things, but we also need to invest in. In heaven's rewards, right? We also need to invest in heaven's rewards. Jesus talking about money, he says this in Luke 12, in Luke 12:15 he says, and I know this is not in your notes and printed because I just didn't have space, but it'll be up on the screen or you can look it up in your Bible. It says this, watch out, let's say watch out, right? And be on guard against all greed. In other words, it's good to invest, but it's not good to be greedy, right? And so guard against all greed.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:56:38]:
Watch out. Because one's life is not in the abundance of his possession. Then he told them a parable. A rich man's land was very productive. And he thought to himself, hey, what should I do? Since I don't have anywhere to store my crops, I'll do this, he said, I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones and store all my grains and goods there. Then I'll say to myself, hey, man, you did good, right? You have many goods stored up for many years. Take it easy, Eat, drink and enjoy yourself. Things you have prepared, whose will they be? That's how it is with the one who stores up treasures for himself and is not rich toward God.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:57:21]:
In other words, it's like Jesus is telling, this is a parable. So this is not a real person that this happens to, but I think this is many people is what he's telling, right? He's telling the story is like, this is a common thing. We think like, man, I'm going to invest, I'm going to do all these things. And then when I get to that place, man, I'm sitting pretty and I can eat, drink, do whatever I like. I can live the good life. But he says, to be honest, I'm not sure why it doesn't say it in this one. He says, but that person, he says that he did not know that his life was required of him on that day, right? And so that's why it says, where? Who's going to get your money now? You made all this money, what did it profit you, right? And he says, this is what's happened to a man who's not rich toward God. And so God calls us to invest not just in things for your retirement and savings and your college, for your kids or your retirement or some big dream, but he says, invest in heaven's reward because one day, you know, one day you're going to reap the reward of that.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:58:41]:
Now remember that previous point. He said this. There is a grievous evil that I have seen under the sun. Riches which were kept by the owner to his hurt. This is an example of that, right? Where that he held on to the money and it hurt him. Because money is a tool, right? Money is a tool. Money is not a master. Money is a cruel master, but it is a good tool.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [00:59:11]:
So we never want to let money be our master. But when we get much, God says, you know, part of that is invest it, invest it for yourself, right? And you know what? That when you bear a reward out of that, God says this, hey, that you're entitled to enjoy that the goodness is part of the God's blessing, right? But you shouldn't consume everything, right? Invest, be rich toward God. And because we don't want to lay up treasures only in this world, he says, do not lay up treasures for yourself on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal for your. Where your treasure is there, where your heart be also. And you know last week when we Talked about the 1% challenge, right? Was giving a 1% more than whatever it is that you, you're giving, giving 1% more on the way to honoring God with the tithe, right? And we just talked about last week if, in case you weren't here, that we just talked about that. I really believe that the tithe is God's kind of standard in terms of giving. But we understand that for us to do the tithe, because that means 10%, most of us, we would be upside down, we cannot do that. So we just talked about.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:00:43]:
I much rather agree with God and what he says, even if I cannot do it right, than to try to change the word of God so it fits with my lifestyle, right? And so why? Because when I change the word of God to fit my lifestyle, I don't need grace. I won't get grace. You know why? Because I said I don't need grace. Because I'm not doing nothing wrong, right? I could be justify anything. I don't have to follow. I don't think that's part of the Bible. That's antiquated. And God tells us how to live in relationship, how to honor God with our body.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:01:28]:
I don't know, it's like that's old fashioned. There's not a grace that covers because I'm changing it. And sometimes I think that what can happen is do people struggle? Yeah, people struggle. Is it fatal? No, it's not supposed to be, right? But when I fail because none of us never sins, right? Even after having come believers, right? That's just not the way that works. But there is a grace when I agree with that, right? So that's what we talked about a little bit last week. So at the end of the service, you know, just a bunch of Guys came up to me, he says, oh man, that was so good because it just reminded me, you know, one of my friends, he, he said this. And I remember he had just gone through a divorce and started coming back to the church. And it was a difficult time trying to swing and trying to cover things that were two incomes used to do.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:02:29]:
Now he just won, right? And so I just remembered it was a person. And he, he committed to say, you know, I'm going to just work to try to honor God toward the tithe. And he says this, this is God's test, right? So he said, test me in this. And so he did. And I just said, just try it and see if God is faithful. And then there's this lady and her son that she was looking for a place to stay and she didn't know where to stay. And you know, he had a three bedroom house all by himself. And she said, do you know anybody that I can rent a room from and I can pay so much? And I just asked my friend, and there's this lady and her son, teenage.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:03:17]:
Would this be helpful for you? Because it would be definitely a blessing to her. And he said, oh my gosh, how much can she. And he said, you know what? That's how much I'm short. And that was the blessing, right? And it was. And they lived there for a few years. And then, you know, when things changed, they moved on out. But, you know, the blessings of God continued to grow in his life. He gave his testimony at church.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:03:48]:
Not about that, just about like how he came to Jesus. And this one gal that I'd seen her at church, she was talking, wow, who's that guy? That's such a great, he had such a great heart. Oh yeah, that's my friend. And they started meeting and then the blessings of God, it's not always financial, right? Because he didn't. There was some financial blessings, but what he got out of sharing that testimony was he got a wife, right? They started dating and I had the opportunity, the privilege to do the wedding right on the beach. And sometimes that's the way the blessings of God look, right? So when we say that, the 1% challenge, we're saying this is like, hey, do it for three months. See if God does not move on your behalf, where you can say, God, open the floodgates of heaven. And it may not always be financial.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:04:47]:
We talked about, sometimes you get the God price, right? You pay less than you thought. Sometimes you get income that came in you never expected. Sometimes you're making it in Ways that you never thought, you doesn't pencil out, but somehow you're just still making it. But after that, too, another guy came up to me, and I knew about his story. I just. I just. I didn't have a chance to ask him about it, so I didn't want to share a story. But he came up, he says, glenn, you remember that? I said, no, I remember.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:05:15]:
And when we talked about it, he was gung ho. He was saying, if the Bible says it, we're going to do it. We're going to tithe. And then he went home, talked to his wife, and she said, no, we ain't. We're not going to make it. We cannot pay for. We cannot pay our rent and all this stuff. And so I said to him, he asked me, glenn, what should I do? I said, you know what? Honor your wife.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:05:40]:
You got to have agreement on this. You guys got to work together. Don't make her resent God because she's not at that place. What can you agree on? So they agreed 2%. So I said, just work toward that tithe. And so they did, and they started to 2%. And then he said this, and he was just telling me all this last week. It says, and the next thing I know, I got a race.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:06:09]:
And it covered more than the 2%, right? And so then they went to 3%. And then he said, you know, what happened is, you know, different things happened, and he got a bonus and different things, like along the way that he would always this. It would raise it a percent and then raise it a percent. And he said that it wasn't painless because when they started to do that, he was working downtown, and he would drive to downtown, but he said, you know what? Parking downtown back then was like 500 bucks a month in the building, right? So he would said, I'm gonna catch the bus. I'm catch the bus. And, you know, he's kind of junior executive kind of thing, but catching a bus to go. And they're just trying to honor the Lord. And God was being so faithful.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:07:02]:
And then one day he said, the president said, hey, come into my office. And he was like, oh, my gosh, I'm going to get canned. Because he said this when. As soon as he came and he said, close the door. Oh. So he's just kind of reeling. He says, you know, that project that you were working on that was outstanding, and here's a $10,000 bonus, and we're gonna give you a car for free. So they gave him a Camry and back then, brand new Camry, and he was just like in tears, right? And he's just gone from thing to thing to thing.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:07:40]:
And then he became controller at this other place. And then like later on as CFO executive. And then he ended up being president of a company here. And he just was telling that story and how he never thought that he would be at this place in his life, right? But how grateful he was to God that it didn't pencil out. In some ways, he didn't know how it was going to work. But God was always faithful. When God met, he met God, that God somehow met him. He couldn't have predicted it.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:08:18]:
He wouldn't have wrote it, you know, but he's kind of toward the end of his career now, and retirement looks good, right? There's, you know, sometimes healthy little things come up, right? But he has the capacity to do it now that he never thought he would be able to do. And it's just because God is faithful, right? We just got to manage the ins and the outskirts. And we say, instead of being the pattern of the world, let's renew our mind to the pattern that God has for us. We'll be able to receive the blessing when it's given. Make sense? Let's bow our heads. We'll close in a word of prayer. Father, I thank youk that yout understand the challenges that we have. You understand that at times we.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:09:11]:
We've gotten ourselves maybe a little over our heads and we're trying to figure things out, trying to get that cash flow flowing the right way. And Lord, I know it's. Sometimes it doesn't happen without a little bit of pain. It doesn't happen with a little bit of sacrifice at times. But I thank you, it's worth it so that we can have the ease and the peace of mind that sometimes we reverse things that have been generations in our families, in our bloodline, that. But Lord, that we just received that. We were made to be blessed and to be a blessing. But it takes some adjustment on us and managing our ins and managing our outs.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:09:52]:
But Father, I thank you that when we do, not only are we blessed, but thank you that we can become a blessing. And Father, just like my friends who have kind of shared. Lord, that I thank you that that's what you want for each of you sons and each of your daughters. That, Lord, that you said to bring it into the storehouse. Lord, they said that when we give to the poor, we lend to you and that you always pay back. Father, we're thankful for these aspects that you're moved in our lives. Would you'd bless us, Lord, that for some of us this is a challenging message because some of us, we've never heard this before and for some of us, Lord, we've known it. But Lord, that this is a time to maybe to take you up, Lord, on restructuring and renewing my mind that Lord, I'm not just a consumer.

Pastor Glenn Yamaguchi [01:10:50]:
I'm meant to be, Lord, a person who's a saver. I'm meant to be a person who's an investor, Lord, I'm meant to be a person who's generous. And so Father, would you just meet the people wherever they're at today. Would you bless them? Thank you. That you know your sons, you know your daughters. In Jesus name, amen. Hey, God bless you guys. Thanks for joining us.