I don’t know if you have experienced crippling debt? I am not talking about things being tight where you are just getting by each month – I am talking about serious debt where you are getting phone calls daily demanding money, where you are afraid to answer the door or open the mail because you simply can’t face another person asking for money that you know you owe but you simply can’t pay. This happened to me around 10 years ago during the GFC. I hadn’t been reckless or run up huge credit card debts, in fact all I did was guarantee a loan for a company that was caught up in the crash and when it folded the banks didn’t care who was at the end of the chain – all they wanted was their money back.
There are a series of miracles that happened that saw me get through and I have no doubt about the faithfulness of God in that, however I still live with the consequences of what happened to this day. I still don’t like opening the mail, I am super nervous about taking on any debt and I know I lost some of my ‘entrepreneurial gift’ that saw me start a number of businesses and projects.
Why am I telling you this? Well for two reasons – firstly the most obvious; I am aware that there are a number of you struggling with finances and I want to tell you that we can help, you can get free of the horror of debt and I would encourage you in the first instance to talk to one of the leaders and/or make an appointment with Vicky. But the main reason I am highlighting this is to tell you why I know we can have confidence in our faith in Jesus to get us through – it is actually at the centre of our faith!
All of us have a debt that we cannot pay, the bible tells us we have all fallen short and if we are honest we all know how often we muck up. We hurt people, we lie, gossip, watch things we shouldn’t and let’s not even talk about our thoughts. Any one of these things is enough to separate us from a Holy God. But our God found a way to clear that debt – He sent Jesus to pay it for us. Think about it – it’s like owing money to a bank but instead of sending debt collectors or taking you to court, they come to your house with a bag of cash and tell you not to worry!! This is what Jesus has done for us in dying – He has made a way for all the guilt, the shame, the separation to cease and pronounced us FREE. I am so grateful to God for the way He helped set me free from physical debt but it pales into insignificance compared with what He did to set me free from the debt I owed Him that on my own I could never have repaid.