Lesson 1: Why Does Money Matter?
Lesson1.Why Does Money Matter?
Becoming Provident Providers
Overall Objective: At the conclusion of this lesson, students will:
- Understand the elements and organization of this class
- Understand our perspective
- Understand the principles of provident living
- Understand why money matters, and
- Understand how money can help bring us to Christ.
Preparation
Reading 1: Read Robert D. Hales, “Becoming Provident Providers Temporally and Spiritually,” Ensign, May 2009, 7–10.
Find the Mormon Message video on from Elder Robert D. Hales titled “Becoming Provident Providers.” This can be copied to your computer and used in the class.
Suggested Lesson Development
Class Elements and Organization
In this class, we will follow the pamphlet, “All is Safely Gathered In: Family Finances.” This class of nine weeks will answer eight important questions, one per week. We will then have a summary lesson at the end. The eight questions are:
1. Why Does Money Matter?
2. How Do I Set Financial Goals?
3. Why Pay Tithes and Offerings?
4. How do I Set Up an Annual Budget?
5. How Do I Set Up a Monthly Budget?
6. How Do I Build a Reserve or Emergency Fund?
7. Why is Consumer Debt Bad and How do I Get out of Debt?
8. How Do I Teach My Children Financial Responsibility?
I believe that as we come to answer these eight important questions and as we learn the principles of provident living, we will become more provident providers, both temporally and spiritually, for ourselves, our families, and the world. And most importantly, we will be becoming more like our Savior Jesus Christ.
There are four parts to this class: read, learn, teach, and apply.
Readings. Readings will be emailed to you. They are conference talks and other materials prepared by the Church to help you in your quest to live the principles of provident living.. I would like you to read this material before class to help you prepare for class.
Lessons. Lessons are what I teach. They are summaries of the important material presented in a way to help you learn. You are welcome to read the instructor notes and lesson materials as you prepare for the class as well. It is all available on the website at
Teach. Teaching is what you do as you teach your family in a family home evening lesson. I will send you possible materials you might use to help as you teach that lesson.
Apply. The final part is to apply what you learn to your lives that week. We will have assignments, questions, and other things to help you integrate the material into your lives. Please note that we will share success stories the next Sunday we meet.
Perspective
Our perspective is that personal finance is simply part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is God’s gift to us to help us become more like Him and His son Jesus Christ. Our gift to Him is the type of person we become as we apply the principles of personal finance in our lives. Because personal finance is part of the gospel of Jesus Christ,God wants us to learn it. Four important reasons are:
1. To bring us to His son Jesus Christ. Since it is God’s work and glory to bring to pass the eternal life of each of us,[1]and the only way we can do that is through His son Jesus Christ,[2] then the purpose of personal finance is to “Bring us to Christ.”
2. To help us accomplish our divine missions. Each of us has a mission to perform, a work that only we can do on this earth. We need God’s help to be able to accomplish that mission, and personal finance can help.
3. To help us return with our families back to God’s presence. Heaven will not be heaven without our families. Our key is to live in such a way that we all can return and live with God and our families eternally. We must remember that the most important work we will ever do will be within the walls of our own home,[3] not within the walls at work, church, sports, or at any other organization.
4. To help us become wiser financial stewards. Since everything we have and are is from God,[4] then we are not owners, but stewards over the blessings that God has shared or loaned to us. As such, we should strive to be wiser and better stewards over our blessings. Remember the parable of the talents.While the Lord gave different amounts to each servant, they all received the same blessing in the end, to “enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”[5]
We should want learn personal finance for a number of reasons:
1. Personal finance helps us to understand and apply wonderful Christ-like characteristics in our lives such as patience, sacrifice, giving, discipline, law of the harvest, etc. Look back on Christ’s parables. A majority of those parables were related to financial matters. All of these lessons were taught particularly well using money.
2. Personal finance allows us to show God by our actions what we truly believe. As the scriptures show, “faith without works is dead,”[6] and “by their works ye shall know them.”[7] Through our actions we show what we truly believe.
3. Personal finance allows us to take the different talents God has given us, and expand and build upon them. We are stewards over the things we have been blessed with, and as such, should be the best stewards that we can possibly become.
The principles of provident living
If possible, show the Mormon Message: Becoming Provident Providers by Elder Robert D. Hales, a U-tube video (it is less than 3 minutes).
Elder Hales in the video said that to provide providently, we must practice the principles of provident living. In the video he gives five different principles of provident living. They were:
1. Joyfully living within our means
2. Being content with what we have
3. Avoiding excessive debt
4. Diligently saving and preparing for rainy day emergencies
5. Seeking for things that will have eternal value and significance.
- If we carefully followed each of these principles, would our lives be better?
Does Money Matter?
Many have asked “Does money matter?” Money matters for many reasons:
1. Money is usedto pay for food,clothing, and shelter.
2. Money is used to purchase things to help take care of and be secure in our families.
3. Money is used by Heavenly Father to teach us eternal lessons which will help us become more like Him and His son Jesus Christ.
As such, money is an important part of our temporal and spiritual lives. The challenge becomes we can either manage our money like our Father in Heaven would like, or our money will manage us. The choice us up to us.
Is money good or bad?
Money is neither good nor bad. Money is a tool, which can be used righteously as we pay our tithes and offerings, and use it to bless the lives of others. Or it can be used incorrectly, as we go into debt, put our future earnings as risk, or if we use it to do things that will bring us misery and unhappiness. The choice is up to us.The Apostle Paul taught that “the love of money is evil, not money itself.”[8]
Of Stones and Storms
When the Brother of Jared came to the seashore, he was commanded to build a boat to take him and his people to the promised land. The Brother of Jared had two concerns for the vessels: light and navigation.[9] The answer to the first concern came in the stones, which the Lord touched, causing them to shine in the darkness.[10] The answer to the second concern came in the storm, which the Lord sent to blow the vessels to the promised land.[11] God was in both the stones and the storm.
The Lord loved the Brother of Jared enough that He sent the storms to take him and his family where they needed to go—to the “promised land.” The economic conditions we are in today can also be compared to the storms that the Brother of Jared and his family faced. There was a purpose in the storms that the Brother of Jared faced.
The storms come not because God is angry, or mad. They are sent because God loves us and wants to help us become like Him. He uses the storms to teach us those things we need to learn. The Brother Jared understood the purpose of the storm and did the best that he could. The storm brought Him and his family to the “promised land.”
I believe that a loving Father is in our storms today. The challenge is whether we will learn the things that God wants us to learnfrom the current storms or not. If we humble ourselves, listen to the Spirit, learn the needed lessons and made the needed changes, we will grow in the knowledge and love of God and become even more provident providers for our families and others. If we just try our best to get by and not learning what a loving Savior is trying to teach us, we may have to endure the same lessons over and over again at the next and succeeding crisis until we learn the lessons God is trying to teach us.
- Could money be one of the tools a loving Savior uses to teach us to come closer to him? (yes)
- What eternal lessons can money teach that can help us be more like Heavenly Father and His son?
- Priorities. (We show our priorities by putting the Lord first through the payment of tithes and offerings and serving in His Church)
- Spiritual and physical creation. (By setting goals and preparing budgets, we are learning the spiritual creation. By achieving goals and budgets, we are doing the physical creation)
- Planning and follow through. (Investing for long-term goals teaches the Law of the Harvest and how we cannot short-cut the investment process)
- Taking care of the poor and needy. (Giving of our time and resources shows we love God more than the things that money can buy)
- Discipline. (We learn to do the right thing now, instead of doing something else that we might want to do)
- Sacrifice. (We learn to give up what we want now for something we want more in the future. This is a sacrifice, but can also be called an investment, the “best investment you can possibly make.”
- Not running faster than we have strength and resources. (We learn to be wise stewards over the things that god has blessed us with and we use these blessing to bless ourselves, our families, and others)
- Are money matters temporal or spiritual matters?
Money matters are spiritual matters because:
•1. All things are spiritual
•The Lord said: “All things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal.”[12]
•The commandments for us to live within our means, live on a budget, get out of debt, build a reserve, etc., are not temporal but spiritual commandments.
•2. There is no true freedom without financial freedom
•President Ezra Taft Benson said:The Lord desires his Saints to be free and independent in the critical days ahead. But no man is truly free who is in financial bondage. [13]
•To be truly free, we must work to get and stay out of debt, as debt is one of Satan’s greatest tools to limit our freedom—both spiritually and economically.
Planning your Finances is Important
Please use either the discussion below or share one of your experiences to share the importance of planning, especially planning your financial life.
Discussion
- If you wanted to build a house, what would be the most important item you would need before you could begin construction? (a blueprint or plan for the construction)
- What would likely happen if you had no blueprint or plan? (it might not turn out well)
Just as a builder must have a plan for building a house, we need a plan for our financial life as well. We have the plan of salvation which is the overall plan for our lives. But we must also plan for our financial lives as well.
Quotation:
President Ezra Taft Benson said:
Plan for your financial future. As you move through life toward retirement and the decades which follow, we invite all . . . to plan frugally for the years following full-time employment. . . . Proceed cautiously so that the planning of a lifetime is not disrupted by one or a series of poor financial decisions. Plan your financial future early; then follow the plan.[14]
- How do you plan for your financial future?
The purpose of this class is to help you as you begin planning for your financial future. In this class we will teach the basics of what you need to know to become a more provident provider and someone who is planning for their financial future.
Summary
Personal finance is simply part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As such, God wants us to learn it as it will help bring us to Christ, accomplish our divine missions, return with our families to Heavenly Father’s presence, and be wiser stewards.
We have been commanded to become provident providers and to learn and live the principles of provident living. Living these principles will make a difference in our lives and the lives of our families and friends.
There is a purpose to money—money is necessary in many ways. But money can also be a tool to help us become more Christ-like and to show that we put the Kingdom of God first in our lives.
Finally, there will be storms in our lives. But instead of seeing the storms as problems, we should see them as further evidence of God’s love for us. And if we learn the lessons He is trying to teach us, the storms will bring us closer to and help us to become more like our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ. Because “all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.”[15]
Share your testimony of the importance of one or more of these principles.
Assignments
Reading. Read the Conference article by Robert D. Hales, “Becoming Provident Providers Temporally and Spiritually,” Ensign, May 2009, 7–10. Think through each of the principles he discusses and how that could help.
Family Home Evening Assignment. Select one of the points from the conference article by Robert D. Hales above. Use that point as your lesson for your Family Home Evening lesson that you teach your family. Be prepared to comment on your Family Home Evening activity next Sunday. There are also two other FHE lessons on wealth that may be used.
OptionalOnline Assignment. I encourage you to go to the LDS Provident Living website at LDS.org and click on Home and Family and then Family Finances. Watch the Online Financial Course: Peace in our Lives. This is the framework from which we will be talking these next 9 weeks.
Page 1 of 7
[1] Moses 1:39.
[2] John 14:6.
[3] Harold B. Lee,
[4] Psalms 24:6.
[5] Matthew 25:14-30.
[6] James 2:18.
[7] Moroni 7:5.
[8] 1 Timothy 6:10.
[9] See Ether chapters 2-3.
[10] Ether 6:3.
[11] Ether 6:5.
[12]D&C 29:34.
[13]“Prepare Ye,” Ensign, Jan. 1974, p. 69.
[14]Italics added, “To the Elderly in the Church,” Ensign, Nov. 1989, 4.
[15] D&C 122:7.