If you lost all means of financial support tomorrow, how long could you hold onto your house? How you answer that question gets to the heart of today's topic—financial margins. How you answer that is going to reveal an awful lot about your life. Because a lot of us are fine as long as we keep getting paid. But if anything were to happen to even one month's income, there would be nothing to fall back on. What makes it worse is that it's almost normal to spend more than you earn. I read this past week that over 80 percent of all Americans owe more than they own.

We're in a series called "Room to Breathe," looking at the margins we need in our lives in order to succeed. A margin is that space between ourselves and our limits. It's the safety net; it's the buffer zone that we need as we go through the ups and downs of life. We're supposed to have this room to breathe. If we don't, we fall apart. Life gets out of control fast without its protection. Without it, we break down. When you're living month to month, paycheck to paycheck, always stretching and straining to make ends meet, the toll on your life is devastating. It's an awful way to live.

Lack of money can tear away at your self-esteem. It can destroy your home life. It can cause embarrassment and shame. It can create ripples of tension and breakdown through all other areas and relationships in your life. In fact, a study was recently released that traced the causes of divorce in American society. The number-one problem that couples cited as a whitewater problem has to do with finances. This is why the Bible teaches us to work hard to create and maintain financial margins. Why? Because when you live within your limits, there's freedom.

One of the most beautiful verses in the entire Bible is Psalm 16:6: "Your boundary lines mark out pleasant places for me." When I live within those parameters, it's good. Those are pleasant places for me. I'm rewarded when I follow them. So what are the boundary lines God has drawn for us in terms of our finances? You might be surprised to find the Bible's got a lot to say about this subject; the Bible has sometimes uncomfortably specific advice on how we can—step by step—build our financial margins.

Tithing is the first margin.

The first lesson in margin building that the Bible points us toward is this: With every dollar of income that comes your way, you are to take 10 percent and give it to God's work through your local church. Why 10 percent? I don't know. All I know is that 10 percent is what, through the Bible, God has clearly and unambiguously said is the minimum amount we should return out of all he's given to us. This is where we get our word tithe, which literally means one-tenth. In the last book of the Old Testament the prophet Malachi records these words from God to his people: "Will a man rob God? Surely not. Yet, you robbed me. 'What do you mean?' the people said. 'When did we ever rob you?' God says, 'You have robbed me of the tithes and offerings due to me. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse.'"

Eighty percent of you probably clocked out on me when I raised this as the first management principle. You're sitting there thinking, This looks like it would kill my margin, much less add to it. This seems to fly in the face of what you've just described as the problem, which is that there's not enough money to make ends meet. Now you want me to believe that if I give an additional 10 percent it's going to help my margin? Give me a break. Hang with me here, because this really is a margin-building principle.

If you look at the rest of this passage, you find out that this is a plus instead of a minus, because there's a special promise from God attached to this financial maneuver and investment. God says, "If you tithe, I will open up the windows of heaven for you and pour out a blessing so great you won't have room enough to take it in. Try it. Let me prove it to you." You can look through the Bible from Genesis all the way to the maps, and you won't find another place where God says, "Test me, try me, let me prove it." In Proverbs 3:9, Scripture puts it this way: "Honor the Lord by giving him the first part of all your income, and he will fill your barns with wheat and barley and overflow your wine vats with the finest wines."

Understand what God is saying: If you will take 10 percent out of everything you make and return it to my work through the church that you're a part of, I will become supernaturally involved in your finances. And when I get supernaturally involved in your finances, you will find out it is well worth it. Just think about it. The being who holds the cosmos together with a mere thought will get involved in your checkbook. Let me just talk to you pastorally here. If I could talk to you face to face I'd say, "Listen, the best advice I could ever give anybody about financial issues is this: Trust God in this particular area. Get him supernaturally involved in your financial life. It beats any mutual fund I know. Now, God says for that to happen you must trust him. And trust has to come from the heart. There is no greater gut-check of trust than to give 10 percent to the cause he's directed you to support."

I know that this flies in the face of conventional wisdom. I lived by conventional wisdom for years. Get all you can. Can all you get, then sit on the can. What God is saying is so alien to how a lot of us have chosen to order our lives that he adds, "It is so bizarre in the face of modern culture that I will tack on this little ad: try me and I'll prove it." The first step toward building a margin in your life needs to be God's supernatural involvement.

Avoiding debt is the second margin.

Today it's almost normal to spend more than you earn. Debt is deadly to margins. Easy credit and the debt that comes with that makes us think we're able to live at a level we just can't sustain. We're made to believe that it's buy now, pay later. You can have that large screen TV in your living room this afternoon in time for the Orlando/Indiana game; it's not a big deal. We'll make easy monthly payments. You can have four or five, even six years to pay it off. Whatever you need. What's ten bucks a month? Truth? Binge now, pain later. That's the truth.

Financial analyst Ron Blue tells of going into a jewelry store to get a ring sized. When he was there, he saw this guy buying a Rolex watch. The guy made a down payment of two hundred dollars, and then signed up to pay about two hundred dollars a month for the rest of his life and the rest of his children's life. Ron said, "By the time this guy finished paying for it, he was going to pay twice the sales value because of the high interest." But he walked out of there looking and feeling like someone who could own and wear a Rolex. Can you spell denial? Could he afford a Rolex? No! But he wanted to look like it. He wanted to feel like it, but it's an illusion.

The Bible can get very uncomfortable with its comments about life as some of us choose to live it. One of these comments is in Proverbs 13:7: "One man pretends to be rich, yet has nothing. Another pretends to be poor, yet has great wealth." I've read that the average person entering a store at a shopping mall today is carrying seven credit cards, and the combined balance on those is well in excess of two thousand dollars. That's average. The Bible does not say, "Debt is wrong." The Bible just discourages the use of debt and says when you do it, do it strategically and with your thinking cap on.

Sometimes, taking on debt is a good thing. It can even be wise in the purchase of a house, the buying of land, in things that appreciate. But the danger of debt and why the Bible discourages its use is because it often works against you rather than for you. It deceives you into living a lifestyle that destroys your margin, where you owe more than you own. Then one thing goes wrong, and everything falls apart. A key to building margin is to live within your means. If you only buy what you can really afford, not just what you can handle on easy monthly payments, you'll restore margin to your life.

Saving for the future is the third margin.

Set some money aside in some type of savings as a safety net, a buffer zone for unplanned needs and expenses. Saving for the future is a strong and very specific theme throughout the Bible. Look at this advice from Proverbs 21: "The wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends whatever he gets." Many of us are only one or two paychecks away from absolute poverty. We are one unplanned financial disaster away from bankruptcy. We don't have anything we can fall back on.

I've never met a financial counselor who didn't look at this advice from the Bible and say, "That is so true and important to follow." Usually they'll recommend you start off with one or two months' salary in some type of simple savings account. Then you build up long term savings with CDs, mutual funds, or whatever they recommend at that moment. It will serve you well.

Putting it into practice.

Once you understand these three principles—tithing, consumer debt that is not a wise investment, and building up savings—the Bible says you need to put it into practice. Not just say intellectually, "Yeah, this is good stuff." It means actually putting it into your life, putting it into practice. A lot of us look at this and say, "This sounds great. But I can't live off the 100 percent I'm making now. How am I supposed to implement all these changes the Bible suggests?"

Putting these principles into practice is tough. It takes time to build this kind of margin into your life and to make the lifestyle changes we're talking about. But it is doable. It is not beyond anybody here.

With that in mind, let me throw out a few general words that may be helpful as you get started putting these principles into your life.

First, follow the principles. A lot of people who look at their margin problems say, "I just need to go out and make more money." "I just need a second job," or, "I need to send my spouse out to work." I think that's a shortcut approach. It puts a band-aid on bone cancer. I've struggled with this as much as anyone. When I've failed in this area—the problem was never a money amount issue, it was always a money management issue. There's a difference. The problem is seldom a money amount issue. It's almost always a money management issue.

I read of a financial counselor who had three couples come to his office in succession one day. They all had the same problem. The first couple said, "We make $15,000 a year. It's just not enough for us to live on." The counselor gave them a budget and had them fill out some forms to track everything they were spending. Sure enough, they couldn't live off of what they were making. They left. The next couple came. "We have a problem. We make $25,000 a year. We can't live off what we're making." He had them fill out a budget, and looked at what they were spending. He said, "You're right. It's not enough for you to live on." A third couple came. They made $75,000 a year. "We're just not making enough to buy all the things we need." He gave them a budget. He told them to write down everything they were spending. And once again they were right. It wasn't enough.

You know what? If I could take the $75,000 salary of that one couple and give it to the couple making $15,000 a year, they would have thought they'd died and gone to heaven. They would say, "All our margin problems are solved." But I think that couple would be back in two or three years with the same issues and the same problems. Why? Because the amount of money isn't the issue. Here are three couples who have the same problem, with different monetary levels. That's not the real issue. The issue is money management. It's lifestyle. It's implementing the principles for having room to breathe.

Secondly, be patient. Most financial counselors say, "You didn't lose your margin overnight. You're not going to get it back overnight." One of the worst things you can do is overestimate what can be accomplished in a year. You'll get discouraged. But don't underestimate what you can do in two or three years. Time can really work for you.

Third, take advantage of increases in income. While holding out and hoping for more money isn't the real solution to margin problems, I do think it is wise to take advantage of these changes along with the implementation of the above principles. When you get your next raise, use the increase toward a tithe, paying off a high interest debt or a credit card, or beginning to put some of that toward savings. You don't want to increase your spending. Folks, if you don't have a plan for the increase, you'll just live up to your means. Eat out one or two more times a week, and you'll have the same margin problems at that level of income as you had at your old one.

Fourth, start gradually. Did you know that's legal? In fact, it's the wisest thing to do. Start with putting aside just 2 or 3 percent in savings; maybe 2 or 3 percent to the Lord's work with a firm and prayerful commitment to increase that over time. There's an old saying that holds true when it comes to finances: "By the yard it's hard. Inch by inch it's a cinch ."

When Susan and I first married, we abused every one of these principles. Every time we'd get a credit card in the mail we'd say, "Party time." We really got in over our heads and it took us several years to get out. When we started to get serious about God's management of our finances, one of the best things we did was to plan towards gradual savings, and gradual elimination of high interest debt. We had a goal which we've reached—the elimination of all of our credit cards but one. It was not easy. It is not easy now. But when you live within his boundary lines, it is pleasant. It is freeing. To have all that stress gone is worth it.

Someone asked, "Why didn't you start gradually with the tithe?" We were not willing to take the risk of not having God involved in our finances, and we knew that meant obeying his principles. There were months we didn't see how we could do it. But we believed in God's Word. We did it anyway. Some months our hands shook a little bit more than others as we wrote out the check, but we took comfort in the fact that God is trustworthy.

One of our favorite passages as a family has been Matthew 6. Jesus said, "So don't worry at all about having enough food and clothing. Your heavenly father already knows perfectly well that you need them." He'll give them to you if you give him first place in your life and live as he wants you to. Ask God for help.

Which brings up a final suggestion: Go to God and ask specifically for his help. That's fair. God invites that. If you're following his principles, you can ask for—and expect—his blessings on your life. If you honor God with your life, he's going to honor you with his involvement in your life. He's promised. I've discovered this about God: He can be trusted. That's what this whole discussion is about, isn't it? Trust. Trust is a verb. It's something you do. It's something you experience. It's an action. It's not an intellectual concept. You will never know or experience God's trustworthiness until you trust him.

You may have never let God manage your financial life; I understand that. If I could ask you frankly, "Why not?" I think the answer would be, "Because I really don't trust him." We don't want to say that. It doesn't sound good. It's kind of like saying you're a Communist or you don't like baseball. But deep down, our actions say, "I don't really trust him. I don't know whether he's going to keep his promises." My response is, "Is that because you've tried him and found him to be untrustworthy? Or is it because he's simply been untried?" I think I know what the answer will be.

God has never been tested and found untrustworthy. He's just been written off and untried. Psalm 34 says, "Put God to the test. See how kind he is. See for yourself the way his mercies shower down on all who trust in him." Test God's trustworthiness in terms of your daily life. In Romans 10:11 the Bible says something intriguing: "Anyone who trusts in him will never, never be disappointed." Never.

For Your Reflection

Personal growth: How has this sermon fed your own soul? ___________________________________________

Skill growth: What did this sermon teach you about how to preach? ____________________________________________________________________________

Exegesis and exposition: Highlight the paragraphs in this sermon that helped you better understand Scripture. How does the sermon model ways you could provide helpful biblical exposition for your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Theological Ideas: What biblical principles in this sermon would you like to develop in a sermon? How would you adapt these ideas to reflect your own understanding of Scripture, the Christian life, and the unique message that God is putting on your heart? ____________________________________________________________________________

Outline: How would you improve on this outline by changing the wording, or by adding or subtracting points? _____________________________________________________________________

Application: What is the main application of this sermon? What is the main application of the message you sense God wants you to bring to your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Illustrations: Which illustrations in this sermon would relate well with your hearers? Which cannot be used with your hearers, but they suggest illustrations that could work with your hearers? ____________________________________________________________________________

Credit: Do you plan to use the content of this sermon to a degree that obligates you to give credit? If so, when and how will you do it?

James Emery White is founding and senior pastor of Mecklenburg Community Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and is a consulting editor to Leadership Journal. He is author of Serious Times and A Search for the Spiritual, and blogs at churchandculture.org.