September 1, 2025 • 35 mins
Pray as if it depends on God, work as if it depends on you. Where is the balance?
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Paul, Welcome to Catholic moneytalk, where we talk about all
things money and finance, and wetry to do it through a lens of
being Catholic, where ourultimate goal is to one day be
in Heaven with the Lord. I amyour host. Paul Scarfone, thank
you for being here today.
Welcome back to Catholic moneytalk. Today, I want to talk
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about that balance that many ofus struggle with, and that is
doing our part versus trustingthe Lord. But before we talk
about it, let's say a prayer inthe name of the Father and of
the Son of the Holy Spirit.
Amen, Heavenly Father. We thankyou for this day. We thank you
for all the ways that you loveand bless us. We, thank you for
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your constant provision for us,Lord. We, thank you for the
ability to work and to serveothers. We, thank you for our
intellect. We, thank you forlistening to our prayers and for
answering them. We know that youhave an awesome plan for us.
Allow us to surrender our planto you. Allow us to yield to
your Holy Spirit. Come HolySpirit, we ask all this in Jesus
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name, amen, in the name of theFather and of the Son of the
Holy Spirit, Amen. So I wasgoing to say recently, but a few
months ago, I got a message fromone of the listeners on Catholic
money talk, and I don't, I don'tget a lot of messages, and I
don't go into my little databasearea that kind of collects that
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all the time. I probably have toset an alert for myself or a
notification that I got amessage, but I will get better
at that. So please send me amessage.
But there's a woman who hadreached out,
and she said that her and herhusband, they're in their late
50s. They raised a bunch ofkids, they homeschooled, they
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lived on a modest salary, andthey they, they lived frugally,
and one of the challengesthey've seemed to face is
balancing between working I'llquote her her note here. We know
how to live frugally, but wedon't know the balance between
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working ourselves to death orinsuring enough money for
retirement first, trusting God,right? So that's that quote. We
all struggle with this. Istruggle with this. We know God
has an awesome plan for us, buthe also doesn't let us just,
like, coast through life andlike, like, he's laying track as
we're as the trains coming and,you know, going to some magical
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place. No, there's a lot ofwork, and hard work, sweat,
tears, blood, sweat and tears,right? Whatever that saying is
that we have to do there'sthere's a level of participation
that the Lord invites us intofor his plan. So how do we
balance that? And so toencourage this listener, I would
say none of us know for sure,but we try to learn and we try
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to understand as we go throughlife. So so let's talk about
this for a little bit, right?
Trusting God with money, familyand the unknown. How do we do
this? Well, this past summer,I've been on a bit of a journey,
a couple things that I've beenpraying that the Lord take care
of and many times and manythings, I try. I like to have a
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plan, and I like to understandthe plan, and I love to be the
one to execute the plan and towatch how the plan goes, and if
it's not going according toplan, it irritates me, right?
Because I know what's best. Oh,my goodness, I don't, but in my
brain, sometimes I act, think,talk like I know what's best,
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and I don't. The Lord does. Andone of my favorite stories that
describes this, and I'veprobably shared this before,
but, but this summer, we had alot of readings, the first
readings, the Old Testamentreadings this summer, for it was
probably Sunday Mass and dailymass, but it was retelling the
story of Abraham, right? Inparticular, I want us to think
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about Sarah. So here's Abrahamand Sarah and and they're
they're older, right? And Godshows up to Abraham and says,
Hey, I'm going to make you somepromises. You're going to have a
huge family. You're going to,you know, I'm going to create a
nation that will be my people,and I'll give you a place to
live, and your descendants willbe as numerous as the stars and
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the sand and and all of that.
So, big promises, big promises.
But there's a problem. Abrahamdoesn't have a son, right? He
doesn't have a son to continuehis name to, you know, to have
another family and create moreoffspring. So how is this going
to start? You don't even have ason to do this. So Abraham, they
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trust the Lord, right? And timegoes on. On. Time goes on, years
go on, and they they're onlygetting older, right? They're
only getting older, and theystill don't have a son. And
Sarah recognizes that, I don'tsay recognize, but she Sarah
sees with her own eyes thatshe's part of the problem here,
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right? If she has not been ableto produce an heir for Abraham,
and so she decides to. She'simpatient, and she thinks it's
all her fault and that, I guessthe Lord is waiting for her to
do something. So she decides,you know what Abraham, you can
have my woman servant and gomake a baby, and that happens,
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and then Sarah gets very upset,right? And there the whole,
there's a whole challengingrelationship, you can read it,
but the servant has a baby, andit starts to have a attitude,
like she's better than Sarah, atleast, that's how Sarah
perceives it. So she wants toget rid of her. So Abraham says,
All right, we'll get rid of her.
And her child Ishmael and andthey're gone, right? They're
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kind of banned from the family.
And eventually, right, Sarahbecomes pregnant when, when the
angels first approach Abrahamand says, Oh no, by this time
next year, you know, Sarah'sgonna have a baby. And Sarah's
laughing like there's no way,like no way. And lo and behold,
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she does, right? And Isaac isborn.
And, and we know the wholestory, right? Isaac, then has
Jacob and Esau, and then Jacobhas 12 kids that all become the
tribes of Israel, one of thembeing Joseph. I've told the
story recently. Joseph gets soldinto slavery, into Egypt by his
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other I was gonna say 11brothers, but probably 10 of
them, right? The youngest onemaybe wasn't part of the plot,
but, but Sarah,go back to the first story I was
telling. Sarah gets impatientwith the Lord, takes matters
into our own hands and does herown thing. Okay? And it creates
a problem. It createschallenging problem, and she is
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out of peace because of it. Why?
Because she thought it would goone way. And she started putting
things in motion, and they theywent sideways, right? She She
was impatient, and didn't waitfor the Lord. But here's the
deal, the Lord still showed upand carried out the promise that
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He had made from the beginning,right? He was able to pull his
original plan around, right? AndI love saying this to myself
sometimes when I feel like I'vegotten too involved in something
and messed it up, like Sarah wasunable to create a problem that
God couldn't overcome, right? Soas frustrated she was with
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herself taking matters to herown hands, God still came
through. And in my life, there'stimes where I take things to my
hands, and I do things hopingthat the thing that I want to
happen, my my wish, my hope, myprayer, my goal, right? I take
into like, I try to startanswering my own prayers, right?
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Like I've got the idea I knowwhat needs to happen here, and
it goes sideways, and it getsvery frustrating for me. I'll
get out of peace because my planisn't working. But when I look
back and I see, despite my myeffort, my poor effort, my
misguided effort, the Lord stillcomes through.
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And that goes back tothe scripture verse,
right, Romans, 828, we know allthings work together for good,
for those who love God, who arecalled according to His purpose.
And the way I think about this,when it comes to financial
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matters, you know, familymatters, just large scale, maybe
long term planning,strategic things
is whatever plan we try tofigure out and put in place,
the Lord's still going to workhis thing. And if we're
prayerfully seeking the Lord andprayerfully discerning what's in
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front of us and trying to makedecisions, and when we feel the
prompt when we hear the voice ofGod right through the Holy
Spirit talking to us and givingus direction, we need to listen
right, because that's going tomake our life go a lot smoother
and more peacefully on a coupledifferent reasons. One, because
we're yielding to the HolySpirit, right and when, when we
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are. Within the will of God. Wehave peace when we stand within
the will of God, when we standunder the Lord, when we stand at
the bottom of his cross, whenwe're standing under him, when
we're understanding him right,stand under understand when
we're there, surrendering to theLord's will. It's so peaceful.
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And even if we get it slightlywrong, he's going to fix it.
He's going to come through,because that's what he said.
He's got awesome plans for ourfuture.
So with that perspective,we need to go forward and make
decisions. So we need to do ourbest to trust him, but we also
need to do our part. There's aquote, I think it's Saint
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Augustine that is credited withit, and that is, pray as though
everything depended on God,right? So we pray like
everything depends on God, andwe should act as though
everything depends on you,right? So I need to pray
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like everything depends on God.
I need to work act likeeverything depends on me and and
I forget which Saint this is. Icould take a minute to google
it, but I'll just quote it, andI'll look it up later. But
someone was talking to a I thinkit was a saint. Maybe it was
Padre Pio or something likethat. And they said, How often
should I pray, right? And thesaint said, I'm going to make
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this up, because I'm not lookingit up, but pray an hour every
day, unless you're really busy,then pray two hours, right? And
there's that balance, pray asthough everything depends on
God, and act work as thougheverything depends on you. But
if we are only working so hardbecause we think everything
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we're working because everythingdepends on us, we need to
intentionally pause to rememberthat it doesn't. It all depends
on God, and so we need to praymore. And that's that balance,
and that's what's beautifulabout being in some type of
faith community, whether it be amen's group, a woman's group,
something through your parish,or even in your marriage, in
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your family, where you can helphold each other accountable to
make sure that prayer is thebeginning or at the start of our
action, that we start withprayer. I did a whole one of my
first podcast was that startwith prayer was something that
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probably one of my mosttreasured things, that my my
father gave me, right? And hislegacy was you woke up and you
said, Good morning to Jesus, andyou start everything with a
prayer. Why? Because we want topray like everything depends on
God and and then we can worklike everything depends on us.
So that's kind of the spirituallens, right, the perspective
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that we want to have, right?
Catholic money talk. That's whatwe're trying to do. We look at
financial decisions, we look at,you know, particular practical
situations, and we say, Look,everyone in the world, so many
people, well, in the US, right,where we are, might be faced
with these same situations orsame decisions to make, and at
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the end of the day, we mightmake the same decision. We might
come up with the same pathforward that someone who's not
Catholic comes up with, someonewho's not Christian comes up
with, but we should have done ita different way, right for us,
in particular in today'sconversation, it's because we're
going to be praying like itdepends on God and using that as
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the lens to make our decisions.
So when I go back to mylisteners question, one of the
other things she said in there,so like, how do we make sure
we're not working ourselves todeath, but we're saving enough
and we're trusting God. But oneof the things she said, which
was interesting to me, she said,we're investing a lot now, but
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don't know if it will be enoughin the world's eyes. And when I
first read that, I went, Oh man,like, yeah, it probably wouldn't
be.
But in reality, we don't. Wedon't care about that,
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like we don't carehow we're doing in the world's
eyes. Or at least, we shouldn't,right? Because at the end of our
life, there's only one there'sone judge, one just judge who
loves us so much, who came anddied for us,
we only care about what hethinks
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and when we make decisions, onlycaring about what the Lord
thinks, right, and that'sthrough our well formed
conscience, through our dialogwith our spouse, through prayer
when it comes to. Decisionmaking when we only care what
the Lord thinks he's going tohelp us out. Now, about a year
ago, I'm going to tell just aquick story about trusting God
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and listening. About a year ago,friends of ours, they went
through a challenging moment,and and we were very aware of
it, and we were praying forthem. And in my mind, I like to
try to do things and fix things.
And I was thinking, What couldwe possibly do? Is there
anything we could do for thesepeople? And we're just praying
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and praying and praying, andTaryn calls me up. I remember I
just met with a friend, and I'mdriving out of Panera, and I'm
driving and Taryn calls me. Isay, Hey, honey, what's up? She
says, you know, I've beenthinking and praying for this
family. I said, Yeah, me too.
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She said, I think, I think weneed to write them a check. I
was like, What do you mean? Shegoes, Well, I I know for sure
there's an expense related towhat they're going through, and
I think we should give them agift. And immediately, I
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thought, immediately, when shesaid this to me, I thought of a
number, and I thought she wasright. What she said resonated
with me, and I thought of anumber. I said, What are you
thinking? She said, I don't wantto tell you how much, because I
I want you to pray about it andsee if you come up with the same
number I came up with, I said,Taryn, there's a number in my
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head right now. As soon as yousaid to me, it popped in my
head. What are you thinking? Andjust she said, the amount
that was in my head.
And immediately confirmed to methat the Lord put that number
there. And I even said to Taryn,I said, Taryn, if we do this,
they're going to think we'reweird. We don't have money like
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this. And why am I saying that?
Well, we were saving money forwe got to replace some cars.
We're trying to pay off ourhouse. We're also behind, quote,
unquote, in retirement, as theworld sees it, right? It's
something we keep saving forevery month, but not as much as
you know, the experts I'm doingair quotes here might tell us to
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do, but it's a number that wefeel comfortable with and that
in our prayerful budget we'vecreated, but, but this, this
this amount of money that wasgoing to
put a hiccup in our plan.
But I have learned that when Ihear a word from the Lord, a
sense from the Lord to just doit, he won't let us down. He
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won't let us down. So we got acard, we wrote a letter, we
wrote a check. We stopped bytheir house. They weren't home,
so we just left it there, andthen we didn't hear anything.
And I would look at the bankaccount and see, did they cash
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the check? And it was a weirdfeeling. One, it was, did, did?
Like, did we overstep? Like, whoare we to think that we can help
someone else solve a problem.
You know, I'm thinking of what,what their perspective is of us.
Our perspective was we felt theLord tell us to do something,
and so we did it, and like it'snot on us how someone else
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receives or perceives what wedid, if we're confident that
that's what the Lord called usto do? Well, it was probably two
weeks later I saw the check,cleared the bank account. I
thought, wow, they did. Theyaccepted it. And then the next
day, we're at Mass on Sunday.
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And this couple, they don'tnormally come to our parish, but
they were a couple rows behindus, and
when I turned and saw them,they gave us a hug, and they
said, Thank you, and they toldus that it was the exact amount
of an expense that they hadincurred with their situation.
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And I mean, there is nothingthat kind of confirms what the
Lord told you to do and then youacted on it, and you get that
kind of response. That's justthe Lord saying, like, that's
what I that's exactly what Ineed you to do, like, and I just
felt the biggest encouragementthat like, thank God, because
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sometimes you go through lifeand you do things and you just
don't know what's going tohappen, right? Maybe you see
someone, you offer to pray overthem, and you're like, man, is
this just the Lord making mefeel like I'm crazy? And, yeah.
You pray over them, and youdon't know how it's going to
end. You might not, they mightjust be crying, you know, and
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you just, you just don't know.
But when you're able to kind ofreceive that feedback, right?
I've talked about this before, Ithink with when I had Dr Justin
Anderson on when we do thingsfor people, or we do things in
life, we're longing for someconfirmation that that was the
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right thing to do, becausethat's what we're created for to
that when we die and we standbefore the Lord, he says,
Welcome home, good and faithfulservant, right? It's another
word for you did good, you did agood job. And that's what we're
all trying to do. If we'retrying to get to heaven, we're
trying to do a good job.
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And and so here's the coolthing,
a few months ago, right? I'mlooking at the calendar here.
Three and a half months ago, Iput out on the podcast, Taryn
and I, we paid off our mortgagelike, what the heck? The math
didn't work on that. If we gavesomeone that we hadn't planned
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on giving some type of financialgift, how the heck do we still
pay off the mortgage? Well,because the Lord finds a way to
do whatever he wants done, andif you cooperate with them, you
get to participate in that plan.
You're not just like abystander, collateral damage.
Sometimes it can feel like that,especially when we go through a
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trying or difficult situation,it can feel like this is there's
no way this is going to workout. Like this can't be part of
God's plan, and maybe we haven'tbeen making the right decisions
to fully and peacefullyparticipate in his plan. But at
any moment, we can start doingthat, and we could say, Lord,
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You know what I'm dealing withright now. What do you have in
this for me? What do you have inthis for me, Lord, I'm trusting
you. Just tell me what's next.
And so that's the biggest thing,right? That this listener was
asking me, like, how do webalance that trusting God but
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also doing our part? It meanswe're just constantly pursuing
him, constantly, not just anhour a week when we go to church
on Sunday,but throughout our day.
In any moment, it could be atough work situation, it could
be a tough situation orconversation we need to have
with someone in our family,maybe it's our spouse or a child
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or a parent,and in that moment, you just
say, Lord,give me the words to speak, give
me the ears to listen to thisperson. Let me be able to share
your love with them. And I tellyou, if you go through life and
all you want to do and all youtry to do in every moment is to
share the love of God with thepeople around you, your life's
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going to be awesome, and God'sgoing to take great care of you,
but you still got to do yourpart, right? You still got to
wake up, still got to go towork. You still got to feed your
family, go shopping, clean thehouse, pay the bills, cut the
grass like you know, repairdealing with the home, repair,
repair the water leak in theceiling.
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You just got to keep doing whatyou're doing. The Lord,
he'll take care of you, becausethat's what he does. He said he
would pray, and we're going topray like we like everything
depends on God, and we're goingto work like everything depends
on us. And when we're too busyto pray, we're going to pray
twice as long, right? Those arethe things we're going to do.
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But here's the other thing, andI want to bring this back around
to what the listener said aboutyou know, we're not saving
enough in the world's eyes.
Well, is it the world's eyes, oris it what we think other people
are expecting of us, or whatother people have done that they
think we should be doing, orthings that we see other people
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do that we think we should alsodo, and that is, I would say,
guarding our heart from jealousyand regret.
So if you've lived anyamount of time on Earth, there's
probably been moments in yourlife where you wished you had
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something that someone else had.
And if you're listening to thisand you're like, four or five
years old, yet, like that toythat other kid had at the
daycare or the growth group orthe mom and me group, or
whatever, right that desire, yousee something that someone else
has, you want it as you getolder. I mean, that's easy. That
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could be a job, it could be ahouse, it could be just a
financial situation, right? Yousee something that someone else
has, you go, man, that'd bereally nice. Maybe it was a
vacation, a car, whatever,right? Some, some gift, talent,
skill. It's easy to kind. Getsucked into that, right? Oh,
man, that looks really good. Iwish I had that. And the other
thing is regret to think, ohman, I wish I had never done
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XYZ. Wish I had never boughtthis. I wish I had saved for
that. I wish I had not saved,and I wish I had bought at that
time, right? And when I'm seeingthat a lot with home prices,
particularly in New Jersey andpeople. Some people thinking,
man, we should have, we shouldhave bought a house three years
ago. Why? Why are we waiting?
But if they were prayerful inthe decision at the time and
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confident in it, then just stickwith it. The Lord, he'll take
care of you. He will take careof you. He is faithful. He
promises to so we don't want toallow our thoughts of jealousy
or regret to get in the way ifwe think, well, in the world
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view, we should have a biggerhouse we have so many kids, or
we shouldn't have so many kids.
Other people are going to thinkwe're crazy. Or we should be
saving more money for retirementthan we currently are. Or we
should have spent more money onour child's wedding than we did.
Or we should have allowed ourschool kid to go to that school
because it's more prestigious,even though it costs more, they
would get student loans, on andon and on and on and on. If you
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worry about what the worldthinks, or what the people
around you think, or you'reyou're creating some type of,
you know, keeping up with theJoneses mentality in your head,
you're going to get exhaustedand you're not going to be
peaceful. You'll drive yourselfnuts, and you have to be content
with what you have.
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With contentment comes so muchpeace and joy. I have a whole
episode on contentment,and he's even as I'm
talking about I'm going to lookit up because episode 31
it's on contentment.
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Episode Five, the importance ofprayer. I was talking about that
earlier. So those are your twoother ones. You can actually
listen to this. Go and listen toepisode five and episode 31 but
contentment will keep us fromregret or jealousy, right?
Contentment is allowing us to besatisfied with our current
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situation,knowing that we're trying to get
to heaven, right?
So, so if we're not perfectlyhappy, right? Which is different
than joyful? Happy is differentthan joyful. Happy is fleeting.
Joyful is the concrete, okay?
But if we're not perfectlyhappy, that that's probably
appropriate andpretty obvious to most of us,
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because we're not in heaven,nothing. It's not gonna be
perfect till we're in heaven,but we can be content and have
great peace and be satisfiedwith our current situation,
because we know this is wherethe Lord's kind of put us at
this moment, and then we canjust serve and love those people
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around us. All right. So, so weneed to do our best. We need to
trust the Lord. We're going todo our best, and then we trust
the Lord to do the rest. We'regoing to leave space for the
Lord to show up in our story.
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Turn my story. When we acted onwhat he told us to do, and it
didn't take away from our ourplans or goals or what we were
striving towards.
We still got there, butwe need to pray and we need to
listen, because he does have aplan, and he's constantly
inviting us to participate init.
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And then we need to guard ourhearts from jealousy and from
regret.
Again, Romans, 828, we know allthings work together for good,
for those who love God, who arecalled according to His purpose,
and that's even when life hasn'tgone as we thought it should.
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Because God can use anything,and he can weave it into good.
So I ask you,what does trusting God look like
for you right now, in yourfinances, maybe in your health,
in your family, whateversituation you might be, what
does trusting God look like foryou right now and then? Where do
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you need to do your best? Wheredo you need to apply a little
more effort. Where do you feelLord's calling you to work a
little harderand do that and then and then
watch him do the rest.
And those places that you feellike you're spinning the wheels,
just surrender them to the Lord.
I've done that recently with awith a situation I just. I told
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the Lord, Lord, I'm done tryingto fix this. I'm done. You do
it. And I did it, not in in it.
I did it in a prayerful manner,not like a fed up matter. You
know what? Lord, I'm just done.
I'm done. But I said, Lord, I'mdone trying to orchestrate this
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in humility, I give it to you,Lord, please take care of it
because I can't. So in life,that's that's the approach we
want to take. That's our balancebetween doing our best and
working hard and then trustingGod, right? But the only way
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that works is when those twothings get combined together,
when they complement each other,because we pray, we listen. So
you might have some hopes anddreams out there that maybe you
feel like the Lord wants to dofor you, and you just can't
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figure out how to do it. Well,you can laugh a little like
Sarah did at the impossibility,but believe that God still
fulfills His promises. You mightjust need to be patient. You
might need to wait a little bitlonger. So as we close today, as
I wrap up, this is this is afull take here. I invite us to
pray for peace, contentment,trusting the Lord.
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So let's pray for that rightnow, name of the Father and of
the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen,Lord, we thank you for your
faithfulness to us, yourconstant care for us in our
lives.
Lord, allow us to be contentin the situations that we find
ourselves in. Lord, give usgreat peace. Show us where we
need to actand allow us to trust you more,
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Lord, God,give us a hint. Lord, a loud
hint. When you invite us to toparticipate in your plan to act.
Lord God, show us our part sothat we can do our part in great
trust that you will bring it allto fruition.
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Give us great peace as we followyou.
We ask this in Jesus name, amen,the name of the Father Son, Holy
Spirit, amen. Well, hopefullythis was helpful. In particular,
the listener that sent me thatnote. I hope this, this helps,
and it's, it's not a cleananswer, like, what, what's,
(32:47):
what's the amount of money thatGod wants you to have saved for
retirement that I don't havethat. But hopefully the
perspective is, Lord, we'vesurrendered our life to you.
We've raised kids in the faith.
Help them form good consciencesand good minds. We've let them
go. We can't control them, Lord,hopefully they pursue you. We
(33:12):
pray that they pursue you, Lord,God and just bless us.
You will not forsake us, Lord.
So hopefully that perspectivecan help you today. And I just
want to encourage you and saythe Lord is very, very happy
(33:35):
with you.
You bring him such great joy.
So as you, as you face, thedecisions that this world, you
know, the questions it throws onus. Where do you want to live in
retirement? What do you want todo in retirement? Where are you
gonna, you know, are you gonnabe able to retire or work, or
what we're just say, Lord, whereare you calling us? Are we just
(33:57):
gonna stop working, play golf,retire, on a beach, travel, or
is there a new moment thatyou're going to call us to?
Because I'm sure there's a newmoment he's going to call you
to, and he will provide a way.
He will provide a way. You justhave to be in pursuit of him.
Thank you Jesus for yourfaithfulness, Come Holy Spirit.
(34:20):
Well, I hope this has beenhelpful. Please feel free to
share this episode with any anyfriends or anyone your family
that you think could benefitfrom it. And again, please, if
you've got a topic or a questionyou'd love to, I guess, hear my
take on it. Praise the Lord.
Feel free to click the link inthe podcast. It is, get in touch
(34:46):
with Paul, just click it in theepisode description, and I will
get an email, and I will find away to turn on notifications for
that. So I'm not weeks or monthsbehind responding to people, but
I hope to hear from you. Thank.
For listening, God blessThank you for listening to
(35:08):
Catholic money talk. I hope youjoin us again next time, please
click Subscribe on your podcastapp to get notified of new
episodes. God bless you and havea great day. You
Paul, Welcome to Catholic moneytalk, where we talk about all
things money and finance, and wetry to do it through a lens of
being Catholic, where ourultimate goal is to one day be
in Heaven with the Lord. I amyour host. Paul Scarfone, thank
you for being here today.
Welcome back to Catholic moneytalk. Today, I want to talk
(00:21):
about that balance that many ofus struggle with, and that is
doing our part versus trustingthe Lord. But before we talk
about it, let's say a prayer inthe name of the Father and of
the Son of the Holy Spirit.
Amen, Heavenly Father. We thankyou for this day. We thank you
for all the ways that you loveand bless us. We, thank you for
(00:44):
your constant provision for us,Lord. We, thank you for the
ability to work and to serveothers. We, thank you for our
intellect. We, thank you forlistening to our prayers and for
answering them. We know that youhave an awesome plan for us.
Allow us to surrender our planto you. Allow us to yield to
your Holy Spirit. Come HolySpirit, we ask all this in Jesus
(01:10):
name, amen, in the name of theFather and of the Son of the
Holy Spirit, Amen. So I wasgoing to say recently, but a few
months ago, I got a message fromone of the listeners on Catholic
money talk, and I don't, I don'tget a lot of messages, and I
don't go into my little databasearea that kind of collects that
(01:33):
all the time. I probably have toset an alert for myself or a
notification that I got amessage, but I will get better
at that. So please send me amessage.
But there's a woman who hadreached out,
and she said that her and herhusband, they're in their late
50s. They raised a bunch ofkids, they homeschooled, they
(01:54):
lived on a modest salary, andthey they, they lived frugally,
and one of the challengesthey've seemed to face is
balancing between working I'llquote her her note here. We know
how to live frugally, but wedon't know the balance between
(02:15):
working ourselves to death orinsuring enough money for
retirement first, trusting God,right? So that's that quote. We
all struggle with this. Istruggle with this. We know God
has an awesome plan for us, buthe also doesn't let us just,
like, coast through life andlike, like, he's laying track as
we're as the trains coming and,you know, going to some magical
(02:37):
place. No, there's a lot ofwork, and hard work, sweat,
tears, blood, sweat and tears,right? Whatever that saying is
that we have to do there'sthere's a level of participation
that the Lord invites us intofor his plan. So how do we
balance that? And so toencourage this listener, I would
say none of us know for sure,but we try to learn and we try
(03:01):
to understand as we go throughlife. So so let's talk about
this for a little bit, right?
Trusting God with money, familyand the unknown. How do we do
this? Well, this past summer,I've been on a bit of a journey,
a couple things that I've beenpraying that the Lord take care
of and many times and manythings, I try. I like to have a
(03:26):
plan, and I like to understandthe plan, and I love to be the
one to execute the plan and towatch how the plan goes, and if
it's not going according toplan, it irritates me, right?
Because I know what's best. Oh,my goodness, I don't, but in my
brain, sometimes I act, think,talk like I know what's best,
(03:47):
and I don't. The Lord does. Andone of my favorite stories that
describes this, and I'veprobably shared this before,
but, but this summer, we had alot of readings, the first
readings, the Old Testamentreadings this summer, for it was
probably Sunday Mass and dailymass, but it was retelling the
story of Abraham, right? Inparticular, I want us to think
(04:11):
about Sarah. So here's Abrahamand Sarah and and they're
they're older, right? And Godshows up to Abraham and says,
Hey, I'm going to make you somepromises. You're going to have a
huge family. You're going to,you know, I'm going to create a
nation that will be my people,and I'll give you a place to
live, and your descendants willbe as numerous as the stars and
(04:34):
the sand and and all of that.
So, big promises, big promises.
But there's a problem. Abrahamdoesn't have a son, right? He
doesn't have a son to continuehis name to, you know, to have
another family and create moreoffspring. So how is this going
to start? You don't even have ason to do this. So Abraham, they
(04:57):
trust the Lord, right? And timegoes on. On. Time goes on, years
go on, and they they're onlygetting older, right? They're
only getting older, and theystill don't have a son. And
Sarah recognizes that, I don'tsay recognize, but she Sarah
sees with her own eyes thatshe's part of the problem here,
(05:19):
right? If she has not been ableto produce an heir for Abraham,
and so she decides to. She'simpatient, and she thinks it's
all her fault and that, I guessthe Lord is waiting for her to
do something. So she decides,you know what Abraham, you can
have my woman servant and gomake a baby, and that happens,
(05:45):
and then Sarah gets very upset,right? And there the whole,
there's a whole challengingrelationship, you can read it,
but the servant has a baby, andit starts to have a attitude,
like she's better than Sarah, atleast, that's how Sarah
perceives it. So she wants toget rid of her. So Abraham says,
All right, we'll get rid of her.
And her child Ishmael and andthey're gone, right? They're
(06:10):
kind of banned from the family.
And eventually, right, Sarahbecomes pregnant when, when the
angels first approach Abrahamand says, Oh no, by this time
next year, you know, Sarah'sgonna have a baby. And Sarah's
laughing like there's no way,like no way. And lo and behold,
(06:33):
she does, right? And Isaac isborn.
And, and we know the wholestory, right? Isaac, then has
Jacob and Esau, and then Jacobhas 12 kids that all become the
tribes of Israel, one of thembeing Joseph. I've told the
story recently. Joseph gets soldinto slavery, into Egypt by his
(06:56):
other I was gonna say 11brothers, but probably 10 of
them, right? The youngest onemaybe wasn't part of the plot,
but, but Sarah,go back to the first story I was
telling. Sarah gets impatientwith the Lord, takes matters
into our own hands and does herown thing. Okay? And it creates
a problem. It createschallenging problem, and she is
(07:21):
out of peace because of it. Why?
Because she thought it would goone way. And she started putting
things in motion, and they theywent sideways, right? She She
was impatient, and didn't waitfor the Lord. But here's the
deal, the Lord still showed upand carried out the promise that
(07:41):
He had made from the beginning,right? He was able to pull his
original plan around, right? AndI love saying this to myself
sometimes when I feel like I'vegotten too involved in something
and messed it up, like Sarah wasunable to create a problem that
God couldn't overcome, right? Soas frustrated she was with
(08:06):
herself taking matters to herown hands, God still came
through. And in my life, there'stimes where I take things to my
hands, and I do things hopingthat the thing that I want to
happen, my my wish, my hope, myprayer, my goal, right? I take
into like, I try to startanswering my own prayers, right?
(08:26):
Like I've got the idea I knowwhat needs to happen here, and
it goes sideways, and it getsvery frustrating for me. I'll
get out of peace because my planisn't working. But when I look
back and I see, despite my myeffort, my poor effort, my
misguided effort, the Lord stillcomes through.
(08:52):
And that goes back tothe scripture verse,
right, Romans, 828, we know allthings work together for good,
for those who love God, who arecalled according to His purpose.
And the way I think about this,when it comes to financial
(09:12):
matters, you know, familymatters, just large scale, maybe
long term planning,strategic things
is whatever plan we try tofigure out and put in place,
the Lord's still going to workhis thing. And if we're
prayerfully seeking the Lord andprayerfully discerning what's in
(09:37):
front of us and trying to makedecisions, and when we feel the
prompt when we hear the voice ofGod right through the Holy
Spirit talking to us and givingus direction, we need to listen
right, because that's going tomake our life go a lot smoother
and more peacefully on a coupledifferent reasons. One, because
we're yielding to the HolySpirit, right and when, when we
(09:59):
are. Within the will of God. Wehave peace when we stand within
the will of God, when we standunder the Lord, when we stand at
the bottom of his cross, whenwe're standing under him, when
we're understanding him right,stand under understand when
we're there, surrendering to theLord's will. It's so peaceful.
(10:20):
And even if we get it slightlywrong, he's going to fix it.
He's going to come through,because that's what he said.
He's got awesome plans for ourfuture.
So with that perspective,we need to go forward and make
decisions. So we need to do ourbest to trust him, but we also
need to do our part. There's aquote, I think it's Saint
(10:44):
Augustine that is credited withit, and that is, pray as though
everything depended on God,right? So we pray like
everything depends on God, andwe should act as though
everything depends on you,right? So I need to pray
(11:07):
like everything depends on God.
I need to work act likeeverything depends on me and and
I forget which Saint this is. Icould take a minute to google
it, but I'll just quote it, andI'll look it up later. But
someone was talking to a I thinkit was a saint. Maybe it was
Padre Pio or something likethat. And they said, How often
should I pray, right? And thesaint said, I'm going to make
(11:31):
this up, because I'm not lookingit up, but pray an hour every
day, unless you're really busy,then pray two hours, right? And
there's that balance, pray asthough everything depends on
God, and act work as thougheverything depends on you. But
if we are only working so hardbecause we think everything
(11:55):
we're working because everythingdepends on us, we need to
intentionally pause to rememberthat it doesn't. It all depends
on God, and so we need to praymore. And that's that balance,
and that's what's beautifulabout being in some type of
faith community, whether it be amen's group, a woman's group,
something through your parish,or even in your marriage, in
(12:17):
your family, where you can helphold each other accountable to
make sure that prayer is thebeginning or at the start of our
action, that we start withprayer. I did a whole one of my
first podcast was that startwith prayer was something that
(12:39):
probably one of my mosttreasured things, that my my
father gave me, right? And hislegacy was you woke up and you
said, Good morning to Jesus, andyou start everything with a
prayer. Why? Because we want topray like everything depends on
God and and then we can worklike everything depends on us.
So that's kind of the spirituallens, right, the perspective
(13:01):
that we want to have, right?
Catholic money talk. That's whatwe're trying to do. We look at
financial decisions, we look at,you know, particular practical
situations, and we say, Look,everyone in the world, so many
people, well, in the US, right,where we are, might be faced
with these same situations orsame decisions to make, and at
(13:24):
the end of the day, we mightmake the same decision. We might
come up with the same pathforward that someone who's not
Catholic comes up with, someonewho's not Christian comes up
with, but we should have done ita different way, right for us,
in particular in today'sconversation, it's because we're
going to be praying like itdepends on God and using that as
(13:44):
the lens to make our decisions.
So when I go back to mylisteners question, one of the
other things she said in there,so like, how do we make sure
we're not working ourselves todeath, but we're saving enough
and we're trusting God. But oneof the things she said, which
was interesting to me, she said,we're investing a lot now, but
(14:06):
don't know if it will be enoughin the world's eyes. And when I
first read that, I went, Oh man,like, yeah, it probably wouldn't
be.
But in reality, we don't. Wedon't care about that,
(14:27):
like we don't carehow we're doing in the world's
eyes. Or at least, we shouldn't,right? Because at the end of our
life, there's only one there'sone judge, one just judge who
loves us so much, who came anddied for us,
we only care about what hethinks
(14:49):
and when we make decisions, onlycaring about what the Lord
thinks, right, and that'sthrough our well formed
conscience, through our dialogwith our spouse, through prayer
when it comes to. Decisionmaking when we only care what
the Lord thinks he's going tohelp us out. Now, about a year
ago, I'm going to tell just aquick story about trusting God
(15:14):
and listening. About a year ago,friends of ours, they went
through a challenging moment,and and we were very aware of
it, and we were praying forthem. And in my mind, I like to
try to do things and fix things.
And I was thinking, What couldwe possibly do? Is there
anything we could do for thesepeople? And we're just praying
(15:35):
and praying and praying, andTaryn calls me up. I remember I
just met with a friend, and I'mdriving out of Panera, and I'm
driving and Taryn calls me. Isay, Hey, honey, what's up? She
says, you know, I've beenthinking and praying for this
family. I said, Yeah, me too.
(15:57):
She said, I think, I think weneed to write them a check. I
was like, What do you mean? Shegoes, Well, I I know for sure
there's an expense related towhat they're going through, and
I think we should give them agift. And immediately, I
(16:19):
thought, immediately, when shesaid this to me, I thought of a
number, and I thought she wasright. What she said resonated
with me, and I thought of anumber. I said, What are you
thinking? She said, I don't wantto tell you how much, because I
I want you to pray about it andsee if you come up with the same
number I came up with, I said,Taryn, there's a number in my
(16:42):
head right now. As soon as yousaid to me, it popped in my
head. What are you thinking? Andjust she said, the amount
that was in my head.
And immediately confirmed to methat the Lord put that number
there. And I even said to Taryn,I said, Taryn, if we do this,
they're going to think we'reweird. We don't have money like
(17:06):
this. And why am I saying that?
Well, we were saving money forwe got to replace some cars.
We're trying to pay off ourhouse. We're also behind, quote,
unquote, in retirement, as theworld sees it, right? It's
something we keep saving forevery month, but not as much as
you know, the experts I'm doingair quotes here might tell us to
(17:27):
do, but it's a number that wefeel comfortable with and that
in our prayerful budget we'vecreated, but, but this, this
this amount of money that wasgoing to
put a hiccup in our plan.
But I have learned that when Ihear a word from the Lord, a
sense from the Lord to just doit, he won't let us down. He
(17:49):
won't let us down. So we got acard, we wrote a letter, we
wrote a check. We stopped bytheir house. They weren't home,
so we just left it there, andthen we didn't hear anything.
And I would look at the bankaccount and see, did they cash
(18:10):
the check? And it was a weirdfeeling. One, it was, did, did?
Like, did we overstep? Like, whoare we to think that we can help
someone else solve a problem.
You know, I'm thinking of what,what their perspective is of us.
Our perspective was we felt theLord tell us to do something,
and so we did it, and like it'snot on us how someone else
(18:35):
receives or perceives what wedid, if we're confident that
that's what the Lord called usto do? Well, it was probably two
weeks later I saw the check,cleared the bank account. I
thought, wow, they did. Theyaccepted it. And then the next
day, we're at Mass on Sunday.
(18:59):
And this couple, they don'tnormally come to our parish, but
they were a couple rows behindus, and
when I turned and saw them,they gave us a hug, and they
said, Thank you, and they toldus that it was the exact amount
of an expense that they hadincurred with their situation.
(19:19):
And I mean, there is nothingthat kind of confirms what the
Lord told you to do and then youacted on it, and you get that
kind of response. That's justthe Lord saying, like, that's
what I that's exactly what Ineed you to do, like, and I just
felt the biggest encouragementthat like, thank God, because
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sometimes you go through lifeand you do things and you just
don't know what's going tohappen, right? Maybe you see
someone, you offer to pray overthem, and you're like, man, is
this just the Lord making mefeel like I'm crazy? And, yeah.
You pray over them, and youdon't know how it's going to
end. You might not, they mightjust be crying, you know, and
(20:06):
you just, you just don't know.
But when you're able to kind ofreceive that feedback, right?
I've talked about this before, Ithink with when I had Dr Justin
Anderson on when we do thingsfor people, or we do things in
life, we're longing for someconfirmation that that was the
(20:27):
right thing to do, becausethat's what we're created for to
that when we die and we standbefore the Lord, he says,
Welcome home, good and faithfulservant, right? It's another
word for you did good, you did agood job. And that's what we're
all trying to do. If we'retrying to get to heaven, we're
trying to do a good job.
(20:48):
And and so here's the coolthing,
a few months ago, right? I'mlooking at the calendar here.
Three and a half months ago, Iput out on the podcast, Taryn
and I, we paid off our mortgagelike, what the heck? The math
didn't work on that. If we gavesomeone that we hadn't planned
(21:09):
on giving some type of financialgift, how the heck do we still
pay off the mortgage? Well,because the Lord finds a way to
do whatever he wants done, andif you cooperate with them, you
get to participate in that plan.
You're not just like abystander, collateral damage.
Sometimes it can feel like that,especially when we go through a
(21:30):
trying or difficult situation,it can feel like this is there's
no way this is going to workout. Like this can't be part of
God's plan, and maybe we haven'tbeen making the right decisions
to fully and peacefullyparticipate in his plan. But at
any moment, we can start doingthat, and we could say, Lord,
(21:52):
You know what I'm dealing withright now. What do you have in
this for me? What do you have inthis for me, Lord, I'm trusting
you. Just tell me what's next.
And so that's the biggest thing,right? That this listener was
asking me, like, how do webalance that trusting God but
(22:13):
also doing our part? It meanswe're just constantly pursuing
him, constantly, not just anhour a week when we go to church
on Sunday,but throughout our day.
In any moment, it could be atough work situation, it could
be a tough situation orconversation we need to have
with someone in our family,maybe it's our spouse or a child
(22:36):
or a parent,and in that moment, you just
say, Lord,give me the words to speak, give
me the ears to listen to thisperson. Let me be able to share
your love with them. And I tellyou, if you go through life and
all you want to do and all youtry to do in every moment is to
share the love of God with thepeople around you, your life's
(22:56):
going to be awesome, and God'sgoing to take great care of you,
but you still got to do yourpart, right? You still got to
wake up, still got to go towork. You still got to feed your
family, go shopping, clean thehouse, pay the bills, cut the
grass like you know, repairdealing with the home, repair,
repair the water leak in theceiling.
(23:19):
You just got to keep doing whatyou're doing. The Lord,
he'll take care of you, becausethat's what he does. He said he
would pray, and we're going topray like we like everything
depends on God, and we're goingto work like everything depends
on us. And when we're too busyto pray, we're going to pray
twice as long, right? Those arethe things we're going to do.
(23:40):
But here's the other thing, andI want to bring this back around
to what the listener said aboutyou know, we're not saving
enough in the world's eyes.
Well, is it the world's eyes, oris it what we think other people
are expecting of us, or whatother people have done that they
think we should be doing, orthings that we see other people
(24:01):
do that we think we should alsodo, and that is, I would say,
guarding our heart from jealousyand regret.
So if you've lived anyamount of time on Earth, there's
probably been moments in yourlife where you wished you had
(24:24):
something that someone else had.
And if you're listening to thisand you're like, four or five
years old, yet, like that toythat other kid had at the
daycare or the growth group orthe mom and me group, or
whatever, right that desire, yousee something that someone else
has, you want it as you getolder. I mean, that's easy. That
(24:46):
could be a job, it could be ahouse, it could be just a
financial situation, right? Yousee something that someone else
has, you go, man, that'd bereally nice. Maybe it was a
vacation, a car, whatever,right? Some, some gift, talent,
skill. It's easy to kind. Getsucked into that, right? Oh,
man, that looks really good. Iwish I had that. And the other
thing is regret to think, ohman, I wish I had never done
(25:09):
XYZ. Wish I had never boughtthis. I wish I had saved for
that. I wish I had not saved,and I wish I had bought at that
time, right? And when I'm seeingthat a lot with home prices,
particularly in New Jersey andpeople. Some people thinking,
man, we should have, we shouldhave bought a house three years
ago. Why? Why are we waiting?
But if they were prayerful inthe decision at the time and
(25:31):
confident in it, then just stickwith it. The Lord, he'll take
care of you. He will take careof you. He is faithful. He
promises to so we don't want toallow our thoughts of jealousy
or regret to get in the way ifwe think, well, in the world
(25:51):
view, we should have a biggerhouse we have so many kids, or
we shouldn't have so many kids.
Other people are going to thinkwe're crazy. Or we should be
saving more money for retirementthan we currently are. Or we
should have spent more money onour child's wedding than we did.
Or we should have allowed ourschool kid to go to that school
because it's more prestigious,even though it costs more, they
would get student loans, on andon and on and on and on. If you
(26:14):
worry about what the worldthinks, or what the people
around you think, or you'reyou're creating some type of,
you know, keeping up with theJoneses mentality in your head,
you're going to get exhaustedand you're not going to be
peaceful. You'll drive yourselfnuts, and you have to be content
with what you have.
(26:37):
With contentment comes so muchpeace and joy. I have a whole
episode on contentment,and he's even as I'm
talking about I'm going to lookit up because episode 31
it's on contentment.
(27:02):
Episode Five, the importance ofprayer. I was talking about that
earlier. So those are your twoother ones. You can actually
listen to this. Go and listen toepisode five and episode 31 but
contentment will keep us fromregret or jealousy, right?
Contentment is allowing us to besatisfied with our current
(27:22):
situation,knowing that we're trying to get
to heaven, right?
So, so if we're not perfectlyhappy, right? Which is different
than joyful? Happy is differentthan joyful. Happy is fleeting.
Joyful is the concrete, okay?
But if we're not perfectlyhappy, that that's probably
appropriate andpretty obvious to most of us,
(27:48):
because we're not in heaven,nothing. It's not gonna be
perfect till we're in heaven,but we can be content and have
great peace and be satisfiedwith our current situation,
because we know this is wherethe Lord's kind of put us at
this moment, and then we canjust serve and love those people
(28:09):
around us. All right. So, so weneed to do our best. We need to
trust the Lord. We're going todo our best, and then we trust
the Lord to do the rest. We'regoing to leave space for the
Lord to show up in our story.
(28:32):
Turn my story. When we acted onwhat he told us to do, and it
didn't take away from our ourplans or goals or what we were
striving towards.
We still got there, butwe need to pray and we need to
listen, because he does have aplan, and he's constantly
inviting us to participate init.
(28:52):
And then we need to guard ourhearts from jealousy and from
regret.
Again, Romans, 828, we know allthings work together for good,
for those who love God, who arecalled according to His purpose,
and that's even when life hasn'tgone as we thought it should.
(29:14):
Because God can use anything,and he can weave it into good.
So I ask you,what does trusting God look like
for you right now, in yourfinances, maybe in your health,
in your family, whateversituation you might be, what
does trusting God look like foryou right now and then? Where do
(29:34):
you need to do your best? Wheredo you need to apply a little
more effort. Where do you feelLord's calling you to work a
little harderand do that and then and then
watch him do the rest.
And those places that you feellike you're spinning the wheels,
just surrender them to the Lord.
I've done that recently with awith a situation I just. I told
(29:58):
the Lord, Lord, I'm done tryingto fix this. I'm done. You do
it. And I did it, not in in it.
I did it in a prayerful manner,not like a fed up matter. You
know what? Lord, I'm just done.
I'm done. But I said, Lord, I'mdone trying to orchestrate this
(30:18):
in humility, I give it to you,Lord, please take care of it
because I can't. So in life,that's that's the approach we
want to take. That's our balancebetween doing our best and
working hard and then trustingGod, right? But the only way
(30:42):
that works is when those twothings get combined together,
when they complement each other,because we pray, we listen. So
you might have some hopes anddreams out there that maybe you
feel like the Lord wants to dofor you, and you just can't
(31:03):
figure out how to do it. Well,you can laugh a little like
Sarah did at the impossibility,but believe that God still
fulfills His promises. You mightjust need to be patient. You
might need to wait a little bitlonger. So as we close today, as
I wrap up, this is this is afull take here. I invite us to
pray for peace, contentment,trusting the Lord.
(31:34):
So let's pray for that rightnow, name of the Father and of
the Son, the Holy Spirit, amen,Lord, we thank you for your
faithfulness to us, yourconstant care for us in our
lives.
Lord, allow us to be contentin the situations that we find
ourselves in. Lord, give usgreat peace. Show us where we
need to actand allow us to trust you more,
(31:58):
Lord, God,give us a hint. Lord, a loud
hint. When you invite us to toparticipate in your plan to act.
Lord God, show us our part sothat we can do our part in great
trust that you will bring it allto fruition.
(32:25):
Give us great peace as we followyou.
We ask this in Jesus name, amen,the name of the Father Son, Holy
Spirit, amen. Well, hopefullythis was helpful. In particular,
the listener that sent me thatnote. I hope this, this helps,
and it's, it's not a cleananswer, like, what, what's,
(32:47):
what's the amount of money thatGod wants you to have saved for
retirement that I don't havethat. But hopefully the
perspective is, Lord, we'vesurrendered our life to you.
We've raised kids in the faith.
Help them form good consciencesand good minds. We've let them
go. We can't control them, Lord,hopefully they pursue you. We
(33:12):
pray that they pursue you, Lord,God and just bless us.
You will not forsake us, Lord.
So hopefully that perspectivecan help you today. And I just
want to encourage you and saythe Lord is very, very happy
(33:35):
with you.
You bring him such great joy.
So as you, as you face, thedecisions that this world, you
know, the questions it throws onus. Where do you want to live in
retirement? What do you want todo in retirement? Where are you
gonna, you know, are you gonnabe able to retire or work, or
what we're just say, Lord, whereare you calling us? Are we just
(33:57):
gonna stop working, play golf,retire, on a beach, travel, or
is there a new moment thatyou're going to call us to?
Because I'm sure there's a newmoment he's going to call you
to, and he will provide a way.
He will provide a way. You justhave to be in pursuit of him.
Thank you Jesus for yourfaithfulness, Come Holy Spirit.
(34:20):
Well, I hope this has beenhelpful. Please feel free to
share this episode with any anyfriends or anyone your family
that you think could benefitfrom it. And again, please, if
you've got a topic or a questionyou'd love to, I guess, hear my
take on it. Praise the Lord.
Feel free to click the link inthe podcast. It is, get in touch
(34:46):
with Paul, just click it in theepisode description, and I will
get an email, and I will find away to turn on notifications for
that. So I'm not weeks or monthsbehind responding to people, but
I hope to hear from you. Thank.
For listening, God blessThank you for listening to
(35:08):
Catholic money talk. I hope youjoin us again next time, please
click Subscribe on your podcastapp to get notified of new
episodes. God bless you and havea great day. You
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