The enemy has a pretty specific agenda, “…steal and kill and destroy.” John 10:10. This happens in a variety of ways, some our obvious, like war; but some are not so obvious, like debt.
I was traveling on business today and heard an ad on the radio from some company that wants you to bring in all of your credit card bills (must be $10,000 or more), and they’ll wipe out your debt. That’s right; just dump your debt; no harm, no foul.
This is very disturbing to me. It’s big business getting people into debt, and now there is an even bigger market for getting people out of it. We’ve created an economy that has convinced people that you need stuff, and you need it right now, so come on in and we’ll loan you the money. You can pay it off, really!
Wrong. The average American household carries over $14,000 in debt, including credit cards and car loans and retail store credit. That’s a lot. But it doesn’t stop there, entire cities are in debt. Montreal is still paying off their $2 billion debt from the Olympics they hosted over 28 years ago.
High interest rates ensure you won’t ever pay off credit cards. You run up the bucks on the card thinking you’ll work really hard to pay it off quickly. But then something unexpected happens: life. You get the monthly bill and you see the minimum due is only $50, so you start thinking that maybe instead of paying $100 like you promised yourself, you’ll just pay the minimum and use the other $50 to buy something else! Great plan, right?
What happens is that your debt never gets paid off, so you get more credit from a furniture store or from Home Depot. Suddenly you find you can’t afford to pay more than the minimum on each one, so you’re stuck trying to pay off the credit for 5-10 years.
So what do you do? Consolidation loan! What a brilliant idea! You can just put all of your debt on one, easy to pay loan and you’ll work hard to pay it off early! Right?
Wrong. You consolidate everything and then suddenly Christmas rolls around and you need more stuff, so you convince yourself that it’ll be ok to charge a little bit on your credit card. A month later you do it again, and again, and again until the card is maxed again. Now you’re stuck with a high interest credit card to pay off again, PLUS a consolidation loan.
It’s a never ending cycle, and what happens is that you work and work and work just to pay the minimum amount due. You can’t afford to do anything fun, like an occasional meal out, or a vacation, or anything. So you start getting stressed and that leads to fighting with your spouse and kids, which leads to a very unhappy home.
Game, set and match.
It’s easy to tell you not to get in debt, but it’s impossible to convince you not to do it. Don’t let the enemy win in your life. It’s not worth having everything “right now”, because you know what, it’ll still be there when you’ve saved up for it. Really.
“God, the enemy never sleeps and never stops in their assault on us. Luckily you don’t sleep or stop loving us. Thanks.”
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