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Welcome to Ancient Paths with Craig Hills. I hope you were able to see the last broadcast. We were talking from Genesis chapter 3, verse 13, about the deception of debt, and I'd like to start again here on that particular scripture.
You could have seen the last broadcast, the third in this series, either on television or right here online. If you missed it, please go back and watch it online right when you finish this broadcast. I want to give you today five critical steps that Jan and I followed that eliminated a hundred percent of our debt, including our house mortgage, in about three and a half years.
But before we do that, I want to finish this one thing from Genesis chapter 3, verse 13. There is a deception of debt that most people don't recognize, and in this scripture, we'll just review it again. Verse 13 of Genesis 3: "Then the Lord God said to the woman, 'What is this that you have done?
' And the woman said, 'The serpent deceived me, and I ate. '" That word "deceived" is a very interesting word in Hebrew. It's the Hebrew word "nasha," transliterated in English as "na sha.
" It turns out that it's a homonym. Now, you may not remember from school what a homonym is, but that's a word that sounds the same but has different meanings. For example, "right," "right," or "write.
" "Turn right," "You're right," "Write it down"—sounds exactly the same but has three different meanings. Well, "nasha" is exactly like that. One of the meanings, of course, you already know because it's translated in our Bible as "deceived.
" So, the verb "nasha" is to deceive or to beguile. But this was very interesting to me—to discover that the exact same Hebrew word "nasha" also means "to lend money at interest. " So, "nasha" can mean to deceive or beguile, or to lend money at interest.
And what's very interesting in this verse, Genesis chapter 3, verse 13, is: What did the serpent do to Eve? Not only did he deceive her, but he put her in debt. Now, how deep was the debt that she entered into?
So deep that she and her husband could not pay it off in a lifetime. Do you know that it took the blood of Jesus Christ, His life, His death, and resurrection to pay for that debt that was created when Eve took the advice of a serpent? So not only did he deceive her, but he put her in debt.
I have found that it’s interesting that that same word "nasha" has those two meanings. I have found that there actually is a huge deception around debt. I mean, here’s the crazy thing—just think about this: Here’s, say, an appliance, a large appliance, you could buy for two thousand five hundred dollars.
You could go take cash to purchase this appliance for $2,500, or you could purchase the same appliance for, let's say, ten thousand dollars on credit over a period of time. So, the same—let's say it’s a surround sound big TV—you could buy for twenty-five hundred dollars cash or ten thousand dollars over time. Which one would you like?
People flock to the ten thousand dollar one! You know, that’s crazy. It’s the same home surround sound TV: twenty-five hundred dollars cash, ten thousand dollars on credit.
You’re going to pay ten thousand dollars for the opportunity to pay for it over time? People say yes to it! To me, that’s a deception that makes absolutely no sense.
The same thing: twenty-five hundred dollars, ten thousand dollars—people say, 'I’ll pay ten thousand dollars. ' It doesn’t make any sense. There’s a deception there that people really don’t realize—something that the enemy does that keeps people from seeing true value.
Let me just give you another simple example. I wrote this one down on a piece of paper. Let's say that you charged something for twenty-five hundred dollars on a credit card with nineteen percent interest, and you were going to make a payment of fifty dollars per month.
So, you charged a two thousand five hundred dollar item, and you’re paying fifty dollars a month at nineteen percent interest. How long do you think it would take to pay that item off? As I've asked that question in various meetings, people will guess four years, five years, ten years, twelve years.
The answer is forty years—four-zero! Forty years and six months to pay that off. And here’s the astounding part: You would pay eight thousand ninety-seven dollars and nineteen cents in interest alone.
So, it’s a two thousand five hundred dollar principal, but at nineteen percent, paying the minimum payment of fifty dollars per month, you pay over eight thousand dollars in interest for a total amount paid of ten thousand five hundred ninety-eight dollars. Isn’t that crazy? A two thousand five hundred dollar item, and people are willing to pay ten thousand five hundred and ninety-eight dollars for that item, and it takes them forty years and six months to do that?
That’s what I’m telling you is deception! Why would anybody in their right mind do that if they saw those numbers compared one against the other? Yet people do it day in and day out.
Christians do it day in and day out. There’s a deception. Now, here’s an interesting thing: Do you know that if you just increased your monthly payment by twenty dollars—instead of paying fifty dollars a month, you paid seventy dollars a month—do you know what that would do?
I wrote that down. You would pay the entire debt off in four years and six months instead of forty years! Of the time four years, six months, you'd pay a total interest of one thousand two hundred fourteen dollars, or the total amount paid three thousand seven hundred fourteen dollars, as opposed to ten thousand five hundred ninety-eight dollars that you'd pay if you just kept making the fifty dollar minimum payment.
That's just by increasing your payment twenty dollars a month. Do you know that most people don't know that? They don't see those numbers side by side.
That's why I'm telling you there's a deception in debt. People sign up for things that are absolutely illogical because some kind of deception is operative, and that's what I was talking about before the global strategy conference that took place maybe a hundred under twenty years ago when Satan got all the demons together. I don't know if that literally took place, but I wouldn't be surprised if exactly that happened, because there has been a huge shift in the spirit and a shift in people's thinking to orient people from not ever taking debt to always taking debt, which is where people are today.
Here's an interesting thing I want to touch on: Do you know one of the most destructive types of debt is debt that takes place in a family? When a father or mother or brother—somebody with a good heart—says, "I'll lend you the money. " Suppose a father and mother say to their son or daughter, "We'll lend you the $10,000.
" Do you know the terms that are usually specified? The terms are "Pay us back when you can. " Now let me ask you, when does "when you can" come?
The answer is on the twelfth of never; it doesn't come. In other words, on what morning do you wake up, look in your bank account, and go, "Wow, honey, look at this! We have an extra $10,000 in our bank today; now we can pay your parents back"?
No, it never happens. So when somebody specifies "pay us back when you can," "when you can" never comes. So what happens?
No payment is made toward that debt whatsoever, and now what occurs is resentment begins to build up in the hearts of the lenders, and guilt begins to build up in the hearts of the borrowers. Suppose it's parents and children; what happens now? Because no attempt has been made to pay that debt whatsoever, the parents begin to get resentful.
Suppose the children take their family on vacation somewhere, and it maybe costs $5,000. The parents look at that and say, "Well, isn't that interesting? They've got five thousand dollars to take their family on vacation, and yet they couldn't pay a hundred dollars toward the ten thousand they owe us.
They haven't lifted a finger to pay us one dime. " And maybe another couple of years go by, and the children buy a surround sound television for a couple thousand dollars, and the parents say again, "Well, that's interesting. They've got enough money to buy themselves a brand-new entertainment system, but they haven't paid us one dollar on the debt they owe us.
" Resentment begins to build up in the hearts of the lenders, and do you think that that transmits as an undertone to the hearts of the borrowers? Sure it does. Let's say it's parents and children.
Those children are around the parents; what begins to build up? Guilt. They begin to feel guilty.
Maybe the parents never say anything about it, or maybe they do, or maybe there are some snide comments, and those children feel uncomfortable around their parents. You know what happens now? The children don't want to visit their parents because it's unpleasant; it's uncomfortable.
They're looking for excuses not to be together, and the relationship is destroyed by the enemy over something very simple: family debt. This happens all the time. So the question is, how do I solve it?
Do you know what I recommend? If you're the lender and you lent your children, or a brother, or somebody in your congregation money, and they haven't paid, first of all, I suggest that you repent. Go before the Lord and say, "Lord, I did the right thing, but I did it the wrong way.
" I specified no terms, and by doing that, I hung a noose of debt around that person's neck, and I am enslaving them, and they're not going to get free. Repent and ask God to forgive you for doing it that way. Secondly, go to that person—the person you've lent the money to—and ask them to forgive you.
Before you go, I suggest you do this: ask the Lord this question: "God, do you want me to just release them from the debt, make it a gift, and forgive them? Or do you want me to hold them accountable for the debt and to hold their feet to the fire to pay it? Which is it, God?
Which do you want? " And it may be either one. God may say, "No, they need to be accountable," or the Lord may say, "No, just make it a gift; forgive them; release them; liberate them from that noose of debt around their neck.
" Freedom! So decide which one it is. Go to them, ask for forgiveness, and if God told you to release them, then forgive the debt.
Tell them they're free; they don't have to pay it back; you're converting it into a gift. Or if God told you to hold them accountable, then do that. Go to them and say, "You know, we've made a horrible mistake.
We did the right thing the wrong way. We lent you money, but no terms have been specified, and you know that just puts you in eternal bondage and slavery to debt. It opens the door in the spirit for lots of other debt, and that has been wrong.
" Forgive us now. We'd like to sit with you, and we'd like to determine some terms. We want to help you create a budget and determine how much money you could contribute every month toward that debt.
Then let the work with those who have borrowed the money—your son and daughter, or brother, whoever it is—to determine that and let them begin to become faithful to pay that. Now, what about on the other side? If you're the person who borrowed, the very first thing is Psalm 37:21, unfortunately, applies to you.
That's the scripture that says, "The person who borrows and does not repay is wicked. " So, you've fallen into that category, maybe unknowingly. The first thing is to come before the Lord and repent of your wickedness.
Say, "God, forgive me; unknowingly, I have not made any effort to repay a debt. That's wrong. Please forgive us.
" The second thing is to create a budget, find out how much money is available, determine something you can pay to the family member you've borrowed the money from, and go to them. Ask forgiveness, repent of your wickedness, and tell them what you can do. Say, "You know what I can do?
I can pay $100 per month, or $50 per month, or $500 per month—whatever the number is that God gave you in your budget. Pay that faithfully, honor your word. " Do you know what?
That's a natural step that you can take, and here's a very simple principle: When you do the natural, God will do the supernatural. Do you know what the devil always does? He causes you to focus on what you don't have and what you can't do.
But God will show you what you do have and what you can do. When you focus on that, you do what you can do. Do you know that God Himself will step in and do what you cannot do?
God will release the supernatural when you take steps in the natural. I don't want you to miss out on the package that we have available. Let me just show it to you here: "God's Power to Get Wealth," an eight-CD series and "Five Wealth Secrets 96% of Us Don't Know.
" These two resources contain many principles. This is eight hours of CD teaching and goes into many other things that I can't cover on this broadcast, and the "Five Wealth Secrets" goes again into some details that we're not covering on the broadcast. I really don't want you to miss out.
I believe these are critical resources you need in order to change your financial situation, and I'm gonna invite the announcer to come now and let you know how you can get these resources for yourself. Have you seen decline or even devastation instead of abundance in your finances? Do you want to walk down the path where your financial life works like never before?
Then you need the new package "God's Ancient Path to Wealth" from Craig Hill. This offer includes Craig's book "Five Wealth Secrets 96% of Us Don't Know" and his eight-part CD series titled "God's Power to Get Wealth. " Craig Hill's practical experience and biblical insight will guide you through God's master plan for handling finances, the power behind money, five biblical uses of money, the truth behind sowing and reaping, and much more.
Order these indispensable financial roadmaps, "God's Ancient Path to Wealth," today for a gift of just $45 or more. Call our product line now at 303-797-1139, or simply place your order right here on CraigHill. org and get your financial future placed on God's Ancient Path to Wealth.
Now, back to Craig. So, as I mentioned in this segment before the break, there is an incredible deception that most people are ensnared with regarding debt and don't really realize it. By the way, I'm not saying all debt is always wrong all the time, but do you know I'm finding that the enemy uses this as a huge stumbling block in the lives of so many families?
Here's an incredible thing: I've talked to people who are divorced or in the midst of a divorce, and do you know that many times finances and arguments they've had over money play a significant role in the destruction of their relationship and result in their divorce? This is a very, very common thing, and we need to understand how powerful that is. In the next broadcast, I want to share with you what it is that's so powerful that captures people's hearts and destroys marriages, destroys relationships.
It's not greed; it's not money in and of itself. Do you know it's actually a spirit? I want to share with you in the next broadcast, but right now what I want to share with you is five things that Jan and I did in the natural.
We did natural things, God did supernatural things, and it eliminated our mortgage. You know, back in the mid-90s—1996, 1997—Jan and I began to get a revelation that debt is a bondage. We understood Proverbs 22:7, which says, "The borrower is a slave, or a servant, to the lender.
" I thought, "All of my adult life I’ve had a mortgage. " Now, we never took on any credit card debt, and we didn’t finance our cars or anything like that; we always paid for those up front. But we had always had a home mortgage, and I thought, "You know, I’ve been a slave to this all my life, and I’m many, many more years to be a slave if I want to continue to own this home.
" I thought, "This is demonic; this is crazy. I want to learn. " How to opt out of his system?
So, we began pursuing God. "What should we do, Lord? " And we became real serious in 2000.
"God, this is crazy! We want out of the system. We don't want to be servants to banks for the rest of our lives!
Now banks dictate what we do with our monthly cash flow. Lord, we want to be free. What can we do?
" So, we began to seek God intensely, and five steps were given to us—five things that we began to do that would help us get out of debt. Some of these were actually ones that we had already done, but here’s what I suggest if you’re dealing with a lot of debt: **Step number one:** Make a list of all your creditors. You need to know who your creditors are.
Include family members, people you've borrowed money from, and credit card companies—all of them. You need to know exactly how much you owe each one. Then, repent before the Lord for becoming a slave to all those various masters, intentionally making yourself a slave.
That’s the first thing. So, we did that; we repented and said, "God, it's nobody else's fault. Nobody put a gun to our head and made us sign these credit agreements or this credit agreement on the mortgage on our home.
We did that voluntarily. God, forgive us. " **The second thing** we needed to do was calculate a monthly budget so that we could know how much we were spending and how much was coming in and going out.
You know, I’m just shocked at how many people don’t actually have a written budget. How many people don’t actually know how they spend their money? They’re not sure; they just pay all their bills, and usually there’s nothing left.
That’s not a wise way to manage resources. So, I encourage you—your second step is to create a monthly budget so that you know exactly what’s coming in and what’s going out. In a later broadcast, I'm going to give you some details on exactly how to do that.
**Step number three:** Learn how to be meek in your spending. Intentionally spend less than you make; don’t spend it all. Once you have a budget, you can take a certain amount of money and allocate a certain amount to each one of your creditors each month.
You can allocate, “We’re going to pay this one this much, this one this much, this one this much. ” How do you know how much to pay each one? Pray about it, ask the Lord, ask each other.
Then, contact each one of your creditors. Once you have that amount, contact them with an offer and tell them, "Look, we had agreed to pay thus and such; we’re not able to do that right now, but you know what? Here’s what we can do.
" So, don’t tell your creditors what you can’t do. Don’t hide from your creditors. I’ve found that debt is such a paralyzing type of thing.
Many people don’t answer the door; many people won’t answer the telephone. They’re afraid of creditors; they just avoid them. Do you know that if you step up to your debt and begin to talk to your creditors, some of them are for you?
Some of them will want to help you. I’ve had many, many people tell me that when they actually contacted a particular creditor or credit card company, they actually canceled all the interest and said, "If you just pay the principal, we'd be happy. " I’ve heard many times from people that the amount they owed was reduced just because they were honest.
They stepped up to their debt and began to talk to their creditors. So, contact each creditor with an offer and tell them what you’re able to do, and then make sure you keep your word. Don’t make some outrageous promise like, "I’m going to pay you five thousand dollars a month" or something.
No, make it something that you actually can do and keep your word. **The critical thing** is, once you’ve stepped up to your debt, contacted your creditors, and are keeping your word, expect the supernatural. That’s the fifth step: expect God to do absolutely supernatural things that are impossible for you to do.
God will do supernatural things when you do natural things, and that’s exactly what happened to us. We followed these steps, and in the year 2000, Jan and I became real serious about eliminating our home mortgage. What we knew to do was to begin paying an extra $100 a month on our mortgage, and we allocated a certain amount of money to a jar for investment and multiplication.
We said, "God, we would like to learn how to multiply money. I’ve never done that; I don’t know how to do that. I want to learn.
" Amazingly enough, God brought me someone to teach me how to multiply money. Do you know that in three years, there was a supernatural increase in multiplication that enabled us to pay off our entire home mortgage? We made our last mortgage payment in the early part of 2003, and that was the end of it.
But it was something supernatural that God did when we did natural things. We began to pay an extra hundred dollars a month because we had an intense desire, we broke the power of the spirit of Mammon that had controlled us, and we began to expect God to do supernatural miracles. And that’s exactly what happened; He did.
And we were delivered from debt. From being slaves, and since 2003 we've never been in debt again for anything. So, we've been free to manage the cash flow that God has put in our hands as the Lord directs us, rather than having to serve all kinds of different masters.
You know, God will do exactly the same thing for you; there's no reason He wouldn't do exactly the same thing He did for us. He will do for you. You can follow these same steps, and these are outlined in more detail in this CD series, "God's Power to Get Wealth.
" If you haven't ordered that yet, I really encourage you to do that because it will walk you through, in even more detail, exactly how to do that process that I just talked about. But you know, after we paid off our home mortgage, I began thinking, "I want my entire family out of this. " I don't want my children to ever have to be involved and enslaved to this demonic system of slavery.
God gave us a plan on how to deliver our children, our grandchildren, and all future generations from ever needing to go to a bank to borrow money to have a house. I'll share with you later, in a subsequent broadcast, exactly what that plan is. We called it "The Good Plan" (G-O-O-D: Get Out of Debt), and they actually have a DVD series entitled by that name, "The Good Plan.
" But I will share with you later on, not on this broadcast but on a subsequent one, exactly what the Lord showed us that empowered us to deliver our future generations from this slavery of debt that the enemy has put on our entire nation and many generations. You know, an interesting thing is, I have talked with people about personal finances, and a lot of people go through various financial courses, they go through various seminars, they read the Word of God, and do Bible studies on finances. But you know what I've discovered?
Many people get a plan. They tell me, "I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna follow this plan," and they're excited about it. I check with them a year later and I say, "How did it go?
" Do you know their eyes hit the floor, and they go, "Well, not too well"? I say, "Why? " And you know the answers most of the time?
"I don't know. " Here's what I discovered: Do you know the biggest problem most people have regarding their finances is not that they don't know what to do? The biggest problem is they have an inability to do what they know.
In other words, they know the right things; they just don't do them. Do you know what most people conclude the problem is? "I just lack the discipline to implement my plan.
" I found that is actually not the problem. There's something much, much deeper than that; there's something much more powerful, deeply rooted than that that impacts people's emotions and impacts them spiritually. That powerful force that blocks people from doing what they know to do is a spirit—a powerful demonic spirit called the spirit of Mammon.
Now, that spirit impacts people's minds; it impacts people's emotions. Do you know what I found? Most Christians are not even aware that they're being impacted by that spirit.
They just don't know why they can't get free of debt. They don't know why they can't get a budget. They don't know why they can't even have a conversation between a husband and wife.
You know, one couple told me that in being married for 34 years, they were never able to finish a conversation about their finances because they get so angry and hurt each other so much every time they tried to discuss it. They actually never finished a conversation about finances. Now, that's not natural; that is supernatural, but it's demonic supernatural.
That is a spirit impacting people's lives. On our next broadcast, which will be on television as well as right here on the Internet, you can access it on CraigHill. org or on television.
In this next broadcast, I want to share with you what are the functions of that spirit of Mammon, how does it work, how you can identify it, and how you can eliminate it from your life to break its power, so it no longer influences you and blocks you from doing the very things that you've planned to do. So, in the next broadcast, that's what we're gonna talk about: What is the spirit of Mammon? How does it work?
What are the symptoms of it? How can you tell if it's impacting your life? And how on earth do you break the power of that spirit so it can't influence you anymore?
Again, I want to encourage you to get hold of that next broadcast and make sure you find out about those things. It's critical to understand how to break the spirit of Mammon, or you'll just continue on and on and on with an inability to do the very things you know. So, we'll see you on the next broadcast.
God bless you! Again, be sure to get the "Ancient Path to Wealth" package, including Craig's book "5 Wealth Secrets 96% of Us Don't Know," and his 8-part CD series "God's Power to Get Wealth. " Both resources are yours for a gift of just $45 or more.
Call our product line now at 303-797-1139, or simply order right here online at CraigHill. org. I don't want you to miss out on today's offer: "5 Wealth Secrets 96% of Us Don't Know," and the 8 CD series "God's Power.
" To get wealth, there are principles contained in this book and in this CD series that I find most people don't know. People ask me questions about the things that are answered in these two products, and I don't want you to miss out. These will really benefit your life.
Once again, order right here online or call to receive the Ancient Path to Wealth package for your gift of just $45 or more. For those of you following Kraig along this Ancient Path to Wealth series, the next broadcast is available for viewing online right here at CraigHill. org.
Thank you for watching today's episode of Ancient Paths with Craig Hill.
