Steve Murrell's Blog, page 65

Top 10 Personal Finance Tips (Before You Die)

FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE, USA. After a long flight from Manila, Deborah and I landed in Nashville Friday afternoon. Despite jet lag, Saturday morning I got up and drove to Bethel Franklin for our 3rd Saturday of the month Men’s Discipleship (& breakfast). James Starr, former Dave Ramsey VP, was talking about money. And he was on the money!

Rather than blog my thoughts about James’ talk, I am editing and posting his notes about the “Love Drawer” concept.

In the words of James Starr, here’s what we all should do to prepare for death from a financial perspective…

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The Love Drawer is basically a drawer that houses all of the important information your family needs in case something happens to you. Preparing for death is not a fun task, but it’s crucial to do this for your family.

Every household needs a Love Drawer. It doesn’t matter if you’re single with no kids or 76 and have 12 grandkids—you need a Love Drawer. It’s the last gift you will give your family, so make it a good one. If you truly care about your loved ones, you will take the time to create a Love Drawer.

The drawer should be somewhere in your home and contain everything your spouse or family needs to know when you aren’t around—anything that has to do with your financial life should be in that drawer. You must organize it in a way that anyone can find a specific document in 30 seconds. All files should be clearly marked, in order, and easy for a grieving family member to find. There’s no need to go into extreme detail when creating your Love Drawer. Simply include the appropriate documents in an easy-to-understand format, and you’re good to go!

Your Love Drawer should contain 10 things. Although it may seem daunting to gather all of this material, you will be happy you did once the Love Drawer is created.

1. Cover Letter – This is simply a letter stating the purpose of the Love Drawer. Nothing fancy, just a way to introduce your loved ones to the contents of the drawer.

2. Financial Account – Anything that has money in it and your name on it should be listed in the Love Drawer. This includes account names, amount and account numbers.

3. Funeral Instructions – All details and specifications for funeral plans should be listed so the family can fulfill your wishes. If you are married, you need one for you and one for your spouse.

4. Insurance Policies – All insurance information, including health, car, disability, term life, etc., should be combined into one single document for easy reference. List the type of insurance, who the policy is for, contact information and policy numbers.

5. Important Documents – Any legal or other important documents you have should be noted in the file. This includes deeds, birth certificates, Social Security cards and titles.

6. Love Letters – Since the intention behind the Love Drawer is to keep your legacy going after you’ve passed away, it’s a great idea to include letters to your loved ones.

7. Monthly Budget – Add a copy of your written budget, so your spouse or loved ones know how to operate your household once you’re gone. This will help your family keep track of bills and focus on more important things.

8. Passwords – Write down all passwords, combinations, usernames and PIN numbers. This information allows your loved ones access to any documents, money or information that is left when you are gone.

9. Tax Returns – Keeping tax returns in your Love Drawer is like an insurance policy for yourself in the event that you get audited. Hopefully you never have to pull them out, but if you do, at least you are prepared.

10. Will and Estate Plans – All information pertaining to your will and estate, including names of the executor and Power of Attorney should be located in one file.

If you put your mind to it, you can create your Love Drawer in 30 days! It’s tedious to gather all of the documents and paperwork that goes into the drawer, but it’s a necessary task in order to protect you and your family.

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Thanks, James, for the wisdom. Deborah and I are working on all of the above. How about you?

Weirdness is Not a Fruit of the Spirit

PAMPANGA, PHILIPPINES. Last weekend Deborah and I drove to San Fernando, Pampanga for our Central Luzon Discipleship 2013 conference. We now have 11 Victory churches in the region. About 1000 Victory Group leaders attended the conference. I wish you could have been there. Amazing stories of  the gospel changing lives!

As great as the conference was, I had a troubling conversation with a pastor and his wife. I have had similar conversations with pastors on other continents. Here’s the all-too-familiar story.

Some church members recently attended a “prophetic signs and wonders” conference led by foreigners. After the conference, they returned to their local church passionate, excited, arrogant, judgmental, and weird. Since they now believe that their home church is not sufficiently led by the Spirit, they are determined to change their local church culture to reflect the “moving of the Spirit” they experienced at the conference.

First of all, I am not suggesting that the Spirit was not moving at the conference. I am sure there was a real sense of His presence and power. But, there is a huge difference in how a local church is led and how a revival conference is led.

Second, I should point out that the pastoral couple who brought up this concern are both deeply spiritual prophetic leaders. They are not spiritually dull leaders with no appreciation for spiritual gifts. Yet, they were bothered by the obsession with strange religious experiences that these people are trying to import into their church.

One of the primary reasons these conference attendees felt that Victory pastors are not led by the Spirit is because we schedule and post an ending time for our worship services. Guilty. They also mentioned the absence of gold dust and angel feathers. Guilty again. But does that mean we are not led by the Spirit?

What if the Spirit led us to schedule ending times at all our weekend worship services? What if the Holy Spirit gave us the wisdom to know that when you do six worship services every Sunday, and two on Saturday, and you want your volunteers to return next week to minister in kids church, that you must stick with a schedule? Wisdom is not incompatible with being led by the Spirit.

I’m all about the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in our meetings, and especially in our homes and neighborhoods. But I have little tolerance for arrogant and judgmental attitudes that well-meaning spiritual novices bring back from these conferences.

I pray that our churches and our church members will experience a fresh infilling of the Holy Spirit that will empower us to be His witnesses “in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth.”

In other words, I pray we will respond to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit by becoming more missional, not more mystical.

 

Working Hard or Chasing Fantasies?

When it comes to work ethic, I was raised in the old-school by a West Texas dad who felt it was his parental duty to teach the next generation the value of minimum wage, back-breaking, manual labor.

The first job he arranged for me was digging ditches. That’s right, my dad secured my brother and I summer jobs as ditch-diggers, installing underground telephone cables ten hours a day in the 100 degree Mississippi heat for $1.65 an hour.

Since I complained so much about the heat, the next summer he got me an indoor job. So I spent that summer inside an UN-airconditioned warehouse loading fifty pound fertilizer bags onto pallets. During our breaks we would go outside to cool off. The inside of that warehouse was hotter than outside.

The aforementioned fond summer memories flashed into my head this morning as I read Proverbs 12:11.

He who works his land will have abundant food, but he who chases fantasies lacks judgment.

Here are a couple of quick observations about that verse.

1. Abundance and work are connected. People don’t seem to get the concept of hard work any more. They want instant success, promotion, prosperity, church growth, whatever – without actually working. I watch fresh college grads who don’t understand why the CEO has perks that are not available to them. Aren’t we all created equal? Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. In the real world, there are no participation trophies, the score is kept, and some teams actually lose.

2. Fantasies and work are not connected. It is a simple choice: work or chase fantasies. You can’t do both. How many business people chase get-rich-quick fantasies, while refusing to do the hard work required to succeed? I’ve lost count of kids with athletic “potential” who never make it because they are simply too lazy to succeed. And, I’ve watched too many church-planters chase fantasy strategies that produce nothing but phantom disciples, while refusing to put in the hard work required to make actual disciples.

I am thankful that my dad taught me to love and value hard work.

PS: Lest you think that God’s grace exempts us from hard work, consider what Paul said about both in 1 Corinthians 15:10.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them–yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

 

Remembering the “Day of Valor”

BONIFACIO GLOBAL CITY, PHILIPPINES. Today is Araw ng Kagitingan, aka “Day of Valor” aka Bataan Day. Some of you have never heard of Bataan Day, others have heard of it only in the context of the 160 Bataan Death March Ultramarathon because you follow my friend, The Running Pastor on twitter.

I’ll never forget taking my young sons on a tour of Corregidor Island. We toured the caves and the Malinta Tunnel that served as General MacArthur’s headquarters. We climbed on the massive cannons, Battery Way, Battery Hearn, and Battery Geary. After that trip, we watched some classic WWII movies.

To understand why today is a non-working holiday in the Philippines we have to go back to Corregidor Island on April 9, 1942. Not many people ignored direct orders from Generals Douglas MacArthur, but that’s exactly what Major General Edward King did when he surrendered more than 76,000 Filipino, Chinese, and American soldiers to the Japanese.

That surrender was followed by the infamous 140 kilometer (90 mile) Bataan Death March to Camp O’Donnell in Capas, Tarlac. For days the road was littered with the bodies of the dead, as thousands of starving, dehydrated, wounded, disease-racked soldiers could not keep the pace and were left to die. Thousands more were brutally and randomly executed along the way.

Only 54,000 of the 76,000 who surrendered actually made it to Camp O’Donnell in Tarlac where conditions were deplorable. Some escaped along the way, but about 10,000 died on the Death March.

This, like many events in world history, confirms the doctrine of “total depravity” and makes one wonder what atrocities we would commit every day if not for the restraining power of “common grace.”

So, what will you do on Araw ng Kagitingan? If nothing else, why not thank a veteran for their sacrificial service?

If you are interested in a good MacArthur movie, check out Tommy Lee Jones as General Mac in Emperor.

 

 

27 Years Ago My Life Was Radically Changed Forever

BONIFACIO GLOBAL CITY, PHILIPPINES. Woke up early this morning. Jet lag makes me feel real spiritual, for a few days anyway. I watched the sunrise. Beautiful sight from my 16th floor apartment. Once the jet lag wears off I won’t see the sunrise anymore. I’m not really a morning person.

While sipping hot Earl Grey tea and reading my Bible in what used to be my son’s bedroom, Deborah walked in, hugged me, pointed to the clock, and said, “It’s 6:18, April 5th. William was born 27 years ago. Remember fighting in Makati Med over who would hold him.”

I remember like it was yesterday. One of our best fights ever.

Twenty-seven years ago. Wow! (Technically it is still the 4th where he is in Nashville, but since he was born here, we are already celebrating.)

I serendipitously ran into one of William’s t-ball coaches yesterday. Hadn’t seen him in years. We chatted briefly about our sons. My mind was flooded with good memories the rest of the day.

Twenty-seven years ago. Really?

Every parent knows that the birth of the first child marks the end of life as we know it. Marriage changed my life, but the birth of our first child ended the life I lived up to that moment, and gave me a new one. A better one. A life filled with adventure. And joy. And a lot of other stuff.

William was born 5 weeks after a revolution, the EDSA Revolution (aka the original People Power revolution) that ousted President Marcos. The third week of February 1986, it seemed that all Americans, except us, were fleeing the Philippines. We stayed because there was no way they would allow a passenger as pregnant as Deborah on a plane. And, we had no money to purchase a ticket anyway.

Those were exciting times to be in Manila. Hard to believe that one of the key players in the revolution, Senator Gringo Honasan, is now a friend who is growing in his walk with the Lord.

Twenty-seven years. Can William really be that old?

Looking back, there is one decision Deborah and I made that we will never regret. There are certainly plenty to regret, but we got the big one right. Here is it: We decided that family would be first. Not ministry. Family. We decided that we would do family and ministry in a way that our kids would know that they are more important to us than ministry. Not sure where we got an idea like that, but I am glad we did.

If you are starting out in ministry and have a young family, I hope you will make the same decision we made twenty-seven years ago. I hope your kids grow up knowing that they are more important than your ministry.

Twenty-seven years ago. Happy birthday, William Stephen Murrell, jr.

Here are a couple of family/ministry blogs from deep in the archives.

The Problem with Preacher’s Kids

Is It Possible to Balance Family and Ministry?

 

 

 

3 Phases of the Faith Journey

Last year during my Easter Bible readings I got stuck in John 20 and blogged about the idea of faith as a journey. This year I am stuck in John 19, and the same idea is exploding off the page.

Nicodemus only shows up three times in the Bible. But those three appearances paint a beautiful picture of three phases most of us experience in our faith journey.

1. QUESTIONS & ANSWERS. John 3:1-16. Nicodemus seemed to be fearful and skeptical yet sincere in his first encounter with Jesus. He asked questions and got answers. The answers included two of the most famous statements Jesus ever made: “You must be born again” and John 3:16. Nicodemus came to Jesus at night, presumably so his peers would not know he was talking to Jesus. It’s OK if your faith journey is filled with questions and mixed with a little fear.

2. DEFENDING BUT NOT FOLLOWING. John 7:45-52. Some of the Jewish religious leaders want to kill Jesus, but Nicodemus defends Him by siting a legal loophole. At this point Nicodemus is still not following Jesus, but He is not against Him either. He’s in the middle. Some of you reading this might be defending Him, but are you following Him? Nicodemus is on a journey that will eventually take him to the cross. So are you, if you are really following Jesus.

3. RISKING ALL TO IDENTIFY WITH THE CROSS. John 19:38-42. Finally we find Nicodemus at the cross.That’s where all genuine faith journeys always end. If your faith is leading you away from the cross, you are on the wrong path. Peter and the big twelve are running and hiding, but Nicodemus is at the cross. By identifying with the cross, Nicodemus risked much more than his reputation. His job and his life were on the line. The cross is the point of no return.

Is your faith journey leading you to the cross? Are you willing to risk all and identify with the cross of Christ?

7 Reasons To Like The Bible Series on History Channel

I have heard pastors and church people criticize The Bible Series on History channel. Not me.

Sure, there have been a few inaccuracies. In the Bible Series a lamb shows up on Mt Moriah, but in the Bible it was a ram. In the Bible Series King Cyrus fed Daniel to the lions, but in the Bible it was King Darius. And, of course, the Jesus in the real Bible probably looked more like an olive skinned Middle Eastern laborer than a white Midwestern alternative rocker.

So what?

I’m sure it was far less dangerous to work with a lamb than with a ram, and there probably was not enough time to introduce two kings during Daniel’s life so they merged events from the reigns of Cyrus and Darius. I have no idea why the Jesus actor is European. But, the point of God providing for Abraham and God protecting Daniel was loud and clear. And, so far, the New Testament scenes have clearly communicated the message of Jesus without compromise.

So, I’m not complaining or criticizing. Here are six reasons I’m glad The Bible Series is being shown, even though it (the TV series) is neither infallible nor inerrant.

1. People who don’t read the Bible are watching The Bible Series.

2. People who watch The Bible Series are starting to read the Bible.

3. Producers and entertainment power brokers who see the success of The Bible Series will be open to producing more of the same in the future.

4. People are talking about, tweeting about, and blogging about The Bible Series and Bible stories more than ever.

5. Families are watching The Bible Series together, and are discussing Bible stories.

6. It’s sure better than watching Swamp People, Celebrity Wife Swap, or 60 Minutes.

7. Because Samson and John the Baptizer have awesome dreads. (Number 7 is from my friend Neli Atiga in Singapore.)

Thank you Mark Burnett and Roma Downey for taking a risk and giving us The Bible Series.

Like Kids in a Candy Store, Literally

This conversation happened a couple of months ago while visiting relatives in South Georgia. Cousins Ethan and Eli are eight and twelve-years old. They were talking to my sons James and Jonathan who are twenty-four and twenty-two. The idea of working in a candy warehouse was like heaven to the young cousins.

Eli, “James, if you keep working so much you will never find a wife.”

Ethan, “Eli, he’s got money, he’s got chocolate, he owns a candy store. Why would he want a wife? He’s got it made!”

Yep, when my sons go to work, they are like the proverbial kids in a candy store. Literally. Check out this video of the Candy Galaxy experts creating a candy buffet.

Faith or Fear?

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Two paths. Robert Frost wrote about them, and Kid President pep talked about them. (“Not cool Robert Frost!”) But what are the two paths?

All leaders have two options, two paths, two choices: faith or fear.

While reading the Book of Joshua recently, I noticed those two paths, and I prayed that I would never do what ten of the twelve leaders (spies) did to the people they were called to lead.

Caleb and his friend chose faith. The other ten chose fear.

Here’s Caleb’s summary. “My brothers who went up with me made the hearts of the people melt with fear. I, however, followed the Lord my God wholeheartedly.” (Joshua 14:8)

Two leadership options:

1. FEAR. If we choose fear, we will cause “the hearts of the people to melt with fear.” As leaders we have the power to strengthen or to crush the hearts of those they lead.

2. FAITH. If we choose to “follow God wholeheartedly” then the people will follow our example and respond with faith.

Are you choosing the path of faith or fear? Are you following God wholeheartedly?

5 Leadership Lessons from an Orphan Girl Who Saved a Nation

The Bible. I watched it last night on History Channel. I read it this morning in my favorite chair, drinking my favorite hot tea.

Today’s reading was about a young orphan from a despised ethnic minority who became one of the most influential leaders in ancient Iran. This leader was a female in a male-dominated society. The deck was stacked against her. But that didn’t stop God from changing a nation through Esther.

Here’s the story. Evil King Xerxes (more like a dirty old man than Prince Charming) throws a party to show off his trophy wife, Vashti. But Queen V refuses to play the game, so King X-man sets up the 1st ever Miss Persia contest to find a replacement queen. Esther, a beautiful young Jewish orphan being raised by Uncle Mordecai wins the crown.

Evil Haman, the “assistant to the national security adviser” is angry because Mordecai the Jew will not bow to him. So, Haman tricks the king into signing a law making it legal to kill and rob Jews for one day.

Uncle Mo convinces new Queen E to ask the king to spare the Jews. Esther explains the problem, that anyone entering the king’s presence without an invitation is usually killed, and Esther has not been summoned by the king in a month.

Uncle Mo’s response is the key verse of the whole book:

If you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?

Esther overcomes her fears and convinces the king to help the Jews. The Jews survive, Esther becomes a hero, the king promotes Uncle Mo, Haman is killed, and they all live happily ever after – except Haman’s ten sons who are promptly executed (but we won’t see that on the Disney version).

Five leadership lessons from Esther’s story:

1. We don’t have to stick a fish on it. Esther is the only book in the Bible that does not mention God, the temple, or worship. But God is obviously right in the center.

2. We don’t have to take the credit. Mordecai is the real hero, but Esther got the book deal. Being an invisible leader did not bother Mordecai. He was OK with Esther getting the credit.

3. We don’t have to have a righteous leader. The Jews were saved not because Xerxes was righteous, but because of a young orphan’s boldness, an old man’s wisdom, and a lot of prayer. Generations earlier, God blessed Egypt because of a slave named Joseph, and God blessed Babylon because of an exile named Daniel. Neither Egypt nor Babylon had righteous leaders, but that didn’t hinder God from blessing and protecting His people.

4. We have to defend life. God placed Esther in her position to stop the genocide. Standing up for life could have cost Esther her life. Like Esther, we must stand up for life – the life of the widow & orphan, those dying of AIDS in Africa, those starving in our inner cities, and the life of thousands of unborn who are slaughtered daily through violent abortions.

5. We have to keep listening. Esther listened to Uncle Mo even though she did not want to hear what he said and even though she was now powerful, rich, and famous. Unfortunately, many who get to the top stop listening to those whose advise got them there.