is it wrong to pray for financial help?

[Kingssman]

I never ask to borrow money, most certainly would never ask my own parents for any kind of financial help unless i desperately need it, yet i find myself wanting to turn to God for help, yet when i do, I feel guilty about it.

For the past 3 years i've been trying to pay off debts, I've made progress, made budgets, cut luxuries (cableTV, memberships), i've even stopped using credit cards. Yet just when i felt that I started to get ahead, a life emergency comes along and undoes all my hard work.

First i planned and saved for a trip to watch my nephew graduate highschool (whom i've haven't seen in 5 years due to distance) and just 3 weeks before I would leave, the wife had to go to the emergency room due to breathing issues, thus a whopping $3,000 bill comes in and causes me to cancel my travel plans and having to place $1,500 onto credit.

Then i have a sister getting married, my mom was kind enough to pay for airline tickets to see the wedding and treated it like a big family gift (which i'm am so grateful for) yet 4 days before the trip, my cat somehow broke her leg causing yet another expensive medical bill [won't put the cat down because unfortunately we are not blessed with the ability to have children so we've adopted the furry kind instead]

Now to top it off, I took a pay decrease at work to avoid layoff due to the poor economy so that affects my yearly income. The wife and I talk about our debts, we don't see ourselves as big spenders, if anything we spend it on fixing our old "fixer-upper" house just to get it up to a decent code in case we wanted to adopt. Other than that, things like luxuries are pretty much none.

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Bottom line, just seems like when I am finally looking like i'm crawling out of debt, and the credit card balance turns to 0, something major happens causing me to have to pay for it all with credit. I end up praying to God a lot for help along the lines of "Please don't cause me any more financial pain, please help me keep my working hours to get through this, please help get this house value up so I can re-appraise for cheaper interest rates, please let me somehow win the lottery and have enough to pay off at least 1 credit card."

 

[DoctorJosh]

I never ask to borrow money, most certainly would never ask my own parents for any kind of financial help unless i desperately need it, yet i find myself wanting to turn to God for help, yet when i do, I feel guilty about it.

For the past 3 years i've been trying to pay off debts, I've made progress, made budgets, cut luxuries (cableTV, memberships), i've even stopped using credit cards. Yet just when i felt that I started to get ahead, a life emergency comes along and undoes all my hard work.

First i planned and saved for a trip to watch my nephew graduate highschool (whom i've haven't seen in 5 years due to distance) and just 3 weeks before I would leave, the wife had to go to the emergency room due to breathing issues, thus a whopping $3,000 bill comes in and causes me to cancel my travel plans and having to place $1,500 onto credit.

Then i have a sister getting married, my mom was kind enough to pay for airline tickets to see the wedding and treated it like a big family gift (which i'm am so grateful for) yet 4 days before the trip, my cat somehow broke her leg causing yet another expensive medical bill [won't put the cat down because unfortunately we are not blessed with the ability to have children so we've adopted the furry kind instead]

Now to top it off, I took a pay decrease at work to avoid layoff due to the poor economy so that affects my yearly income. The wife and I talk about our debts, we don't see ourselves as big spenders, if anything we spend it on fixing our old "fixer-upper" house just to get it up to a decent code in case we wanted to adopt. Other than that, things like luxuries are pretty much none.

---------

Bottom line, just seems like when I am finally looking like i'm crawling out of debt, and the credit card balance turns to 0, something major happens causing me to have to pay for it all with credit. I end up praying to God a lot for help along the lines of "Please don't cause me any more financial pain, please help me keep my working hours to get through this, please help get this house value up so I can re-appraise for cheaper interest rates, please let me somehow win the lottery and have enough to pay off at least 1 credit card."

The Bible shows us some good examples of some lessons learned. It also shows us that money is just something used to have control over the people and keep them from truly having absolute Freedom. Taxes upon taxes keep you working till you are old and cannot work anymore. Control. The money is never enough, even millionaires are going bankrupt every month, even movie stars are broke most of the time, and when it comes down to it, everyone just rolls with the punches from day to day and just tries to survive. This world today is not about getting ahead, those days are past, now it is only about survival and buying the things you only need to get by. The rest goes to bills, which in every family that is middle class or below is spending 3/4 of their paycheck into bills alone. Some are spending 80 percent of their check on bills since they have such a high credit card bill. Not much left to live on. So asking God for wisdom is the Key. With wisdom we can find ways to increase our profits, make money on the side with a part time home business, or spend our money more wisely and plan for the unplanned events. Yet, even with this, it may take growing your own garden, build a small greenhouse for under 50 dollars to grow food next to the home or looking for great deals while shopping and just getting the bare items that are healthy to live on. (Remember those college days of romen noodle soup and canned chili?) Kind of like the life today even out of college, except we have to eat healthier and fresh fruits and veggies are cheaper than canned foods are. If I told people I live on $10,000 dollars a month and own my own home (almost paid for) and I grow my own food what I can and just buy cheap organic healthy veggies and mixed nuts to live on they would wonder how I make it and still pay my car insurance and all the other things, but I have been doing it for over 7 years now. I do not take donations from the public either, I live on what I make, and I do build things for people for the gas money I spent getting there, most of the time I do a lot of charity work. You can make it with some wise choices. I live also off the grid, so solar is my electricity which I built myself as well. Depends on what you want to do to make it and survive. When I get done paying my bills (land, internet, cell phone) I have a little over $150 dollars to live on. I make it every month and I just Trust Jesus to take care of me and He has always done so, by giving me that little extra wisdom to fix my own cars, to grow my own food, to do what I need around the house to make it all work out. That is every single bit true and we just have to Trust Jesus more and not depend on the anything else except our heads and the wisdom Jesus gives us to get by and survive. Hope that helped in some way. God Bless.

 

[fm107]

Because of what Jesus has done, we do not know God simply as God.

We know him as our God and our Father because he is both these things to us now.

Just as we would go to our dad in this life and ask for money or food etc, we should likewise pray to our Father and ask for his help in providing us with what we need in life.

God wants us to have dependency on him. All that we have in this life is thanks to God, things could be far worse.

Here are two scriptures which apply to your situation, meditate on them.

Matthew 6:8
your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Matthew 6:25:34
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Stay close to God, stay prayerful and do what is right. God blesses his obedient children and punishes his children who disobey him.

 

[NachoND]

$10,000 a month????

Were do you live?

 

[Autumnleaf]

Sure you can pray for help with money. It might be more powerful just to pray the Lord's Prayer and trust God to work things out. God already knows.

 

[Kingssman]

I like DoctorJosh response on "pray to be wise" God did give us brains to use, now I just need to figure out how to navigate this rough water.

at times i find it so hard to understand how like clockwork things go wrong. Get a bonus, water heater goes out, get a large tax refund, car transmission needs fixed. I guess it is roll with the punches.

 

[DoctorJosh]

I want to take this chance to share some ideas how to make a few extra bucks. If you have a skill that you can teach others from welding to gardening, to building solar heaters to making quilts and blankets, from any talent you have or skill you have you can teach to others on the weekends in groups, clubs or just post it ads on a bill board in the stores you can make a few extra bucks in a weekend. Figure 10-15 dollars a person and even if 10 people show up for the hour or two you just made over a hundred bucks in a few hours time. See where this can go? Extra money is extra in your pocket for a rainy day.

Now, don't scoff at the survival clubs or meetings in your area, but they have a ton of great people. I even teach them a few things at times and you meet all kinds of wonderful people, business people, police officers, judges even and military or ex-military all that you can get to know and amazingly most of them are Christians I am meeting. I teach women and children self defense, I teach which wild plants are edible, I teach other survival skills for the wilderness for hot and cold climates. I sometimes don't even charge, I just want people to be able to survive. My slogan is "Christians Must Survive".

Also upon my last visit to some survival group that was meeting that had over a hundred people, I learned how to make a gasifier that is being made in India to cook on and to also heat the home. A 2 gallon bucket of saw dust till burn for almost 10 hours and you can cook on it and also use it for heat. Awesome, I was taken away by that. So I am also building one. You learn all kinds of cool things, even use those ideas to teach other groups.

The thing is, when the economy gets worse, if you lose your job you need some sort of income if you own a home to at least keep the home and pay some bills and eat at the same time. So if all else fails, you use your skills and talents to teach others what you know and make money off what you know. Even if it is making dolls for children, repairing clothing, sewing designs on pillows (for women to give ideas), but for men it can be anything on building things from a solar heater to a solar cooker (which is very cool and easy to make and you can sell them too). How to build electric bicycles (add a small electric motor and even sell them for extra cash if you have time, they go up to 39 miles per hour depending on which electric motor you use.)

What about survival such as these places I went to, camp fires, making your own dried foods, canned foods, mixing and or selling canned dried chili or soups, wow the list goes on about survival and why is it important? Because an earthquake could hit at any time anywhere, a tornado, a hurricane, a tidal wave, even just a wild fire could take your home or force you out of your home for days. That is what I found awesome about survival groups and meetings. They want people to be prepared for anything that could happen, even losing a home from a fire or eviction and living in tents and being able to survive healthy till you get back on your feet. I was amazed what I have learned from just a few meetings. And I thought I knew a lot about survival, but these people have some awesome ideas and these groups are all over in every major Country as far as I know. Just look for them. If they don't have them there, you can probably start one and its easy to do. Just tell friends and neighbors to meet at the park or by the beach or at Church in the yard and have your meetings.

I also love woodworking seminars. Anything I can build myself is something I love to do and learn about. Got skill and you can make money. Just ask 10 dollars a person and watch how many show up, because if you ask a lot there will be less people and maybe none if they feel they cannot afford it. But at 10 bucks, anyone with an interest will show up. It adds up to be a nice payday for a few hours of talking. Information is the worlds number one money maker.

I thought I would just add this in case any of you are curious just how powerful your mind can be and if you use it as your tool and put it to work for you to make money, you have a job that will never end and always make money doing it. Each new skill is like money in the bank.

God Bless and God gives us the wisdom to help ourselves.

 

[TheDag]

The thing is, when the economy gets worse, if you lose your job you need some sort of income if you own a home to at least keep the home and pay some bills and eat at the same time. So if all else fails, you use your skills and talents to teach others what you know and make money off what you know. Even if it is making dolls for children, repairing clothing, sewing designs on pillows (for women to give ideas), but for men it can be anything on building things from a solar heater to a solar cooker (which is very cool and easy to make and you can sell them too). How to build electric bicycles (add a small electric motor and even sell them for extra cash if you have time, they go up to 39 miles per hour depending on which electric motor you use.)

and where do you get the money for these things if you can't spare money? They are good ideas but only if you have some money to spare to begin with and some people like me will never be good at making things with their hands

 

[DoctorJosh]

and where do you get the money for these things if you can't spare money? They are good ideas but only if you have some money to spare to begin with and some people like me will never be good at making things with their hands

You can either just give the lecture and show pictures and talk about what you have skills with or find things you can build from things around your own home. For instance, Solar cookers are just so simple. Take a look here.

This is an example, but people will still wonder how to make them. They can read about it on the Internet, but until they build one for themselves they will still have questions. So this is where a speaker such as you or anyone else comes in and shows them how to make them and use things around the house to make it that costs them nothing to build it. Tin foil or aluminum foil glued to cardboard or wood works great. Mirrors can also be used if someone wants to get fancy with an old mirror and some cutting tools. (Don't cut yourself.) It gets hot enough to boil water (for sanitary water during floods), it can cook any food, and it uses no electricity but uses only the sun. A true survival kit in its own. Now, you can find cardboard boxes anywhere and a roll of tin foil or aluminum foil is a few dollars or you may have it already at home. That easy. So if you don't have money, look for ideas you can do yourself with what you have on hand or what you can find in the garbage bins (some have stacks of cardboard in them). Just one example. There are thousands of ideas.

If you are interested, just send me a PM telling me what you have skills in building and I will find plans and easy ways to build it and send it to your PM. Within reason of what you have handy around your home, what skills you have and or just say what skills you have and I will try to find things you can build from your own home that cost almost nothing to make. Even things you can sell or teach others how to make.

I am willing to help anyone on this if it will help them out and they are serious about trying to help others and help themselves at the same time.

Remember, most of you live in different countries, different states and different towns and you can help many others in your area learn how to survive and at the same time help yourself too.

God Bless

 

[GaryP]

No, Jesus taught us how to pray. "Our Father" Give us this day our daily bread.

 

[Mattthedford]

Hello,
It is never wrong to ask God for financial help. God wishes above all things that we prosper in every area of our lives(3John 2). How is your giving? Luke 6:38 says, give and it will be given to you. That word "it" is like a fill in the blank, "it" could be love, your time, and also finances. If you give, you are operation a law that requires for whatever you gave to be given back to you.

 

[Peripatetic]

It is absolutely fine to pray for financial relief when you are looking to get your head above water. God knows hour heart, and can tell the difference between need and greed. When thinking about matters of money, try to imagine yourself as a steward of someone else's estate. If you were managing for someone else, you would still pray for financial relief when you got behind on the debts. But you'd be less likely to pray for extra riches because they wouldn't be yours anyway. That's a good measuring stick.