Save For A Rainy Day

A Joyous Plan To Live and Give
by Dale Archer

Golden Key Five

As we see, the wise man saves for the future and he is prepaired for the rainy day. Meanwhile, the foolish man spends everything he gets. Financial planners recommend that you have three to six months' wages saved to carry you through tough times. Our goal here is to be prepared for times when we lose our job or suffer a long-term injury, not to save money to buy personal luxuries. If you are applying the first three of the Golden Keys--love, showing your love, and oneness, your heart understands that it is not about us. It is about others (in this case our family). The question here is quite simple: do you want to be a wise person and save for the future, which is unknown, or would you rather be a foolish person and spend all you get? Would you agree that in God's eyes you want to be seen as a wise person?

• Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do no destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. Matthew 6:19-20

Here, Jesus is talking about treasures on earth, not money needed for those rainy days or even the money need to live on in retirement, but rather luxuries we don't need. Imagine the comparison of a treasure found in heaven verses an earthly treasure. In heaven, the streets are paved with gold and on our earth it is blacktop. I believe you would agree that there's simply no comparison between heavenly and earthly pavement. The same goes with heavenly treasures. There's no comparison. I highly recommend a great little book called The Treasure Principle by Randy Alcorn. It provides a great examination of how one can store up treasures in heaven. It's not surprising that the way to store up heavenly treasures is to give to the poor, just as Jesus told the rich you man in Matthew 19.

The Golden Key for saving for a rainy day is quite simple and easy to use. It is again up to you to take the key and put it into action. Be a wise person and save for the rainy day whenever it comes. Many people do not have such an emergency fund, and when the emergency arises, they're force to use high-interest credit cards. In addition to being financially unsound, it is also unbiblical, so you might want to look again at the discussions we had in the chapter "The Devil in Debt, The God of Gifts" as well as our next golden key. It is also up to you to find the balance between saving for the future and storing excessive treasure on earth. I like to think of saving for retirement as a choice between giving money to men to invest, versus giving money to God for Him to invest. I trust Him infinitely more than any worldly investment fund.

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