511 | Mastering Time and Money

Chris LoCurto 0:00
What rightly relating to time and money will do for you that is coming up next.

Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks, I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. Today we are talking about relationships, time and money. And these are probably the three greatest personal assets that you'll ever have and the privilege and responsibility of managing. We don't worship, nor do we get worth from these things. And you know, you've heard me say this many times before, we shouldn't be getting our worth from people, we should be getting it from God, but I will tell you that that the bulk of your worth should come from the King of the universe, right? That's where you should be learning what he says about you, if you're spending plenty of time in His Word, you will find exactly how he feels about you. And you will find that your worth is not in money. It's not in things. It's not even in the time that you spend here. Part of it does come from relationships, obviously, I gain a portion of my worth from being a husband, a father, you know, but it's considerably smaller than the worth I get from God. So let's just have that caveat in there. Here's the deal, we've got to steward all of them well, and if we don't, there will be consequences when we don't manage them. Well, we inevitably encounter difficulty in pain in our life. I don't think there's anybody listening to the show. Who doesn't agree with that, who can't say that they've experienced it? And I know we have a lot of our listeners, kids that are listening to the show. And so maybe this is a great time to kind of teach them some of the examples of your mistakes by not handling those Well, right? But everybody will come to a place of understanding that if you don't manage relationships, well, time well or money well, that it's eventually going to lead to some level of pain. That's why we talk so much about healthy relationships as you know, the lies that control the conflict, setting healthy boundaries, root system responses, not setting somebody else's reality, all those types of things. But what about having a healthy relationship with time and money? Why is that important? Now, I will tell you, as we go through this episode, I'm gonna bring a whole lot of God into this whole lot of Scripture and in stuff into this because I need you to see something and this is, this is funny how I will always be the guy who will never appeal to the masses, because I don't throw out a message that says, hey, go spend your whole life making as much money as you possibly can. Because after you do that, you're gonna find yourself being happy. It's not true. It's just not. I will teach you the great values in life that I have learned, and then the great values of God. And how making as much money as you possibly can, is never going to make you happy. Now, there is nothing wrong with making money as long as money is not your great worth. And as long as money is not your master, we'll talk about that today as well. The key here is that God is the One who created commerce.

So if you follow His ways of doing it, you'll be amazed at how much easier it is for you to have it. What it doesn't control you. It's amazing how much easier it is for you to have some that you can control. So here's a fact if you don't rightly relate to your time and money, then they will absolutely enslave you. Yes, I just use the word enslave. If you don't have a plan for your assets, your assets will end up using or even abusing you. So today I want to talk about mastering your time and your money. Now, that may sound like a strange approach to some people. So let me explain why I'm using that particular word. We could say manage your time wisely or steward your money. Well, both are necessary, that's for sure. But what we found, however, is that people tend to be slaves to time and money or the lack of time and money. This is the relationship that I'm trying to emphasise Chris that's a strong word slave. Really, is it really a strong word? Is it too strong of a word? Now for those of you that have followed for a long time, and for those of you that follow Dave Ramzy, then, you know, maybe you've come to a place where you've learned that that's true. And you're not dealing with that anymore, which is great. That's fabulous. But I will tell you, it is not too strong of a word to say that people become slaves to time and money. How do I know?

Because one of the things we help people to do is to get out of the bondage of seeking so much worth in either time or money. And for many, many, many people, that is a very, very real thing. So when you have mastery over something, let's say that you've mastered a skill, what we mean is that you have control over it, you can do it really well, and you can do it with proficiency understanding. And it allows you to kind of rightly enjoy and manipulate the very thing that you're mastering, right? And I don't mean to manipulate you in a bad way, although you could do that. But you've made that thing that skill, a useful servant to you. That's not where most people find themselves when it comes to time. So when we come back, how both time and money are limited fluid and must be leveraged to your advantage. Hey, folks, a couple of years ago, I was visiting with a client, and the CEO said to me, Chris, we're not going to hit our goal. I asked him what he meant. And he said, We're gonna miss our three-year revenue goal coming out of the sSratPlan by a few months, I didn't realise it at first, that he was having a little fun with me by saying they were about to triple their company in less than three years. How freaking awesome is that? Folks, these are the kinds of results that businesses get by coming through our four-day strat plan event. On average, we find $2.1 million worth of revenue in the next 12 months that the company was not planning on. And this event is for all-sized businesses. If you're small, medium, or large, it works for every single business, because it's not industry specific. It's about gaining all the information about all the things inside of your business that is holding you back from success and then giving you a plan and a process on how to walk that out and be successful in your business. By discovering the things that are holding you back. It helps you get to all of those goals that you've been planning on for a long time. So if you're ready to get perspective, you need to solve what's holding you and your business back. So you can grow faster than you need strap land. To learn more, go to Chris accardo.com/strap plan. That's Chrislocurto.com/stratplan. So there's a strange relationship between time and money and maybe you've noticed the connection before. But here are some quotes about it. Time is money wasted. Now, pay for it later, Benjamin Franklin. It takes time to make money. And it takes money to save time. Unknown Whew, that was wasted time means wasted money means trouble. Surely temple is a smart little dancer out there. And if that's not enough, if time is money, then I'm an HOUR-PASS-paid little wine. That last one's for fun, but still true. Most people don't consider how they're handling money until it runs out. Or until it ruins them. As somebody who experienced this early early early on in my life, grew up without money, ended up with money ended up in a relationship where I used a lot of that money to impress somebody ended up with no money.

When I was in my late teens and early 20s, I made mistakes with money and very quickly realised that I threw away the things that I knew about handling finances very quickly, and had to make some quick changes to that. So here's the thing. Most people don't consider how they're handling money until it runs out or it ruins them. The same could be said about their time and how they use it or how it uses them. Why? Because they don't understand a simple concept. Or maybe they're just ignoring it. But here it is. both time and money are limited in quantity and availability. Now, here's the thing, there's no shortage. This isn't a scarcity mindset. There's an actual abundance to a point of both time and money. No one has ever had a limitless amount of either time or money. But let's get into some details because as we grow an understanding and gain perspective, it'll give us lead reach over both of these resources. Here's the key, though both time and money are a gift from God Almighty. Without him, neither would exist. And for that matter, you wouldn't exist. He puts them into our hands. And there's a purpose, we're going to get to that later. But there's a purpose for both. So let's start with time. The truth is, while there is an abundance of time, it's going to run out, it is limited, your time is limited, it will run out everybody dies. Maybe when your team you don't think sorry, you don't care, because it just seems like you know, you're gonna live forever. But time keeps moving, its fluid, it's finite, it has to be focused, it has to be trained, it has to be corralled, it has to be invested well, and short, it has to be mastered. If you don't have a plan for your time, then you will become a slave to your time constraints, or the time constraints that others are going to put on you. So in one sense, time, replenishment or resets daily, are all given the same 24 hours, right, we just get the same trip around the sun. But at some point, our time will be up. Someone once said, today is a gift from God learn to enjoy the giver, more than the gift. Spoiler alert. There's an expiration date on your time. So if time is a gift from God, and we know that our time is limited, and we know that we have lots of it to use, at least in the beginning. There's an abundance of time until we get close to the end. Right? If we understand these concepts, and we understand that each person you know, Hebrews 927 tells us each person has appointed a time to die. If we understand these things, and we can understand that we need to master our time. The Psalmist once prayed, teach us to realise the brevity of life so that we may grow in wisdom. Psalm 9012. How are you recognising and actualizing? The brevity of your life? Are you taking control of your time or is the time your master? The average human spends roughly 79 years, that's 28,835 days on earth. So there's an average of 692,000 hours in life.

The clock is literally ticking down. Now. That's the average. It doesn't mean that you're gonna live that long. And it doesn't mean that you're gonna die that early. Maybe you're gonna live a lot longer. That all depends on what God's plan is for you, right? But then there's this afterwards part. Romans 1412 says every one of us will give an answer to God about our life and time. So what is scripture telling us? Master your time and steward it? Well, Be wise with it, because someday, you're gonna have to give an account. Man, so often, and I used to be one of these people in ministry that would teach Hey, all you got to do is say the simple prayer of salvation that doesn't technically exist in Scripture. And if you just say these, this prayer of salvation, everything is good and golden. You don't ever have to think about anything else after that everything is great. And yet, so many Christians can't understand why life can be such a struggle. And why there is a struggle. God doesn't stop with a prayer. God didn't stop at the cross. He is the eternal pursuer of your heart. He is the one who was guiding and directing and trying to get you to understand him more, not you. His goal isn't for you to be focused on yourself. His goal is for you to be focused on Him. And so things we have to understand we still have to give an account of our life. There are so many Christians that are coming to an understanding that our belief system was jacked up about 1700 years ago and that there was a lot of pagan influence that was shoved into our belief system. If you ever want to find out how God feels about paganism, jump right back into it. Deuteronomy 1230 through 31. And take a look. It's super important to recognise that the last thing God wants something that God absolutely hates, is people serving him in the ways that people serve pagan gods. If I'm going to tell you there's a book you need to read, you're probably not ready for it,, it's a tough one. And a lot of people put it down and don't like it because people want to be selfish. That's a book called Pagan Christianity. Pick that up, read it, and don't just listen to it on audio. It's the one book I tell people, that you really need to physically read this thing so that you don't miss anything. But it's a powerful piece of coming to an understanding of some things about God, that God's not done. Trying to get you to be the follower that he wants you to be. Because he understands that the more you become a disciple of his the follower he wants you to be, and the more blessings He has for you. It's not legalism. Most people don't even understand what that term means. That means one of two things. People say it's following God's ways. And it's not that that's actually a lie. Legalism is one of two things, believing that you have salvation by following his ways, and that salvation is not from faith. That is absolutely untrue. And it's wrong. And it's legalism or adding to the things that he's asked you to do. That you have to do those things. Which again, is legalism, why is this all important? Because when you come to an understanding, and again, tonnes of Christians are coming to this understanding recently, and a lot of people are moving away from getting further away from God, which is sad, what Scripture tells us, that's going to happen anyways. Right? When you come to the part of understanding about the afterwards, the thing that follows this life, then you can come to an understanding of what is God asking us to do. When it comes to mastering time? When it comes to mastering money? Is he asking us to go and build empires for ourselves? Or is he asking us to focus on him? There is nothing in there that says you can't go build a successful business, a successful life, or a successful family. But when you come to a place of knowing that the best place you can be in is focusing on mastering your time and money for God and that there are blessings that come with it. And then there are also punishments for when we don't follow the things he asked for. Then it changes the way you look at your life, He is the giver of your time. He's the one who's allowing you to have everything. So many people don't recognise when God says, go look at your harvest, go look at your fields, you don't even recognise that I'm the one who's cutting them in half because you're not being obedient to me. Any good father wants his children to follow His ways.

This is what God's asking you to do. So here is where time and money intersect. At this very real and literal accounting part. When you give an account, to the giver of the gift, about how you spent your time on this planet, what do you think you're gonna say? Did you invest it? Well? Did you honour the giver? Did you waste your life? Were you a master or a slave? Are you able to turn a profit?

Jesus said, how do you benefit if you gain the whole world? But lose your own soul? Ah, well, Chris, that's not what that means. No, it absolutely is what that means. What he's saying is, is that you can't serve two masters. What he's saying is, is that money is not more important than God. Time is not more important than God. When your time ends, doesn't matter how much money you've made. Doesn't matter how much money's in the bank. Doesn't matter more. What you did with your time and your relationship to the giver, or your time in relation to the things of this world. What do you think God is going to think is more important? Quite often in strapline, one of the things we talked about is as we're helping people to run better businesses to make more money to make more profit also remember this you're never gonna get to heaven. And God says, Man, I'm so impressed with what you Get on that bottom line, really screwed up a whole bunch of people in your business, you know, didn't take care of the team members I put there or didn't take care of clients well, but wow, you did a great job running a business. Nobody's ever going to spend time in front of God, and he's going to be impressed with money. No, none of that says that you can't make money. None of that says that you can't build businesses that make money. None of that says that. The key here is if you're going to master your money, then you've got to find out your time, and then you've got to find out the limitations. And one of the big limitations is how God views it. God does not view money as more important than him. Time is more important than him. So I know that's laying down a lot. And a lot of people are going I don't even know how to take this right now. Great. asked me questions. Hit me up with things. We'd love to have those questions. In fact, I'd love to hear if you guys would like to ask questions about anything. If there are scriptural questions that you have or things that you've been struggling with, there's not a question you can ask. Right? This stuff is important, because the more we discover this, and I will tell you as somebody who was taught the wrong things decades ago, and having learned praise God, hallelujah, some of the correct things and so many Christians are coming to understand that we've had some pretty bad influences in our belief system. And it doesn't change you from being a Christian to following God's ways. But instead, it draws you in closer and draws you into greater blessings, and greater understandings, the more we understand the right attitude when it comes to money, and time relationships. And the more we understand how much God wants us to follow Him, not our own hearts, not the ways of the world. But to follow Him, the more we can make better decisions when it comes to mastering these things.

And mastering it doesn't mean that you become you know, somebody who's only focused on making money. Instead, it means that you understand the importance of it, I bust my butt, to put food on the table of not just myself, but my family, and my team, for them to put food on the table for their families. But at the end of the day, everybody understands what's more important to me. If it's between money, and God, money, doesn't even matter. God matters. Money is a tool. So lots of stuff, hey, money is limited, you've probably come to understand that by now. Money keeps moving, it's fluid, but it can replenish itself when it's properly mastered. So if you leave it buried in the backyard, guess what, you're going to lose its value. If you put it in the bank, you're going to struggle to keep up with inflation. If you invest it, you just might get ahead, only to watch it fluctuate, right? Money like time has to be focused, trained and corralled. It has to be put to work has to be invested, it has to be mastered. What happens if we don't, then it's going to do all of those things to us. It will shift your focus off of what's important, it will train you to worry to fret to chase after it. It will invest you in frivolous things that aren't going to help you. Jesus said, don't worry about everyday life, whether you have enough food and drink, or even enough clothes to wear Isn't life more than food and your body more than clothing? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? Of course not folks. None of the worries is going to do anything to add to your life, except add stress. Notice the connection once again between time and money. The lack of money makes you worry and fret, then you get caught in a trap. Or, as I'm saying, enslaved. But can all that worrying about money, and all the things that can buy at any time in your life? Not at all. And Matthew six continues No one can serve two masters, you'll hate one and love the other you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money. So that's pretty darn clear. Choose to master your time and money. Or they will both enslave you. I've taught this for decades. If you don't have a plan for your money, I mean, if you don't put it to work for you, then you will end up working for it month to month paycheck to paycheck. Maybe you've already been there and maybe you've already done that. big keys here. What are we talking about? Once again, caveat, I have plenty of money. I continue to run businesses that make money. I'm just not enslaved to it. And this is a guy who came from no money. Broke as a, you know, times in my childhood, eaten government cheese, no electricity. So we're washing our clothes on the front porch. I know what it's like to be without money. I've been working legally for a paycheck since I was 14. And working before that, under the table, doing everything I can how many times I've worked multiple jobs, two, or three jobs at one time so that I could get ahead? That's happened in my life. I busted it, I understand it. But there was even a time in my life when I thought if I didn't continue to make plenty of money, I would be in trouble, only for God to reveal to me that it's not a matter of that if I understand how to master it, by making God more important than he would help me in my finances. So now let's talk about being a slave to money constraints, Scripture tells us that your debts will control or master you, Proverbs 22, seven, just as the rich rule over the poor, so the borrower is a slave to the lender. You've heard that before. If you've read the economist, Inc, Money Magazine in recent years, then you've likely seen headlines like debt has now become a new form of slavery in the modern world. Actually, folks, that is not new. Historians have often linked real literal slavery with real literal financial debt.

And of course, we see plenty of evidence of that in tonnes of biblical accounts. Debt is a form of slavery. But just keeping out of debt, ie slavery isn't enough. Think about people who've owned slaves. Look at the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt. They were buried with their treasures, sometimes inside of their treasures, and yet they couldn't take them with them. They went on and left, everything behind, the person can only accumulate so much. But no one takes anything with them at the end. First Timothy six, and seven, the apostle Paul writes to his young disciples saying, after all, we brought nothing with us when we came into this world. And we can't take anything with this when we leave it. Psalm 4917, for when they die, they take nothing with them, their wealth will not follow them into the grave. Job said I came naked from my mother's womb, and I will be naked when I leave Ecclesiastes 515, we all come to the end of our lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day we were born. We can't take our riches with us. So we have to focus on mastering it in this life. While we still have time, the cool thing is that you can always get more money, no matter how much you've spent, no matter how much you've lost, or how poorly you've mastered in the past. Don't let your past failures stop you from taking charge of your life. Today. When we come back, learning to master both time and money now while we still can't.

Unknown Speaker 28:27
Freedom, it's so powerful. I felt rejuvenated, almost renewed, I just felt so welcomed and loved and accepted for who I am and not an ounce of judgement. So I was very comfortable there that had a really big impact on me, and that's going to be worth it. It's going to be hard, but it's going to be even better on the other side.  For me, it was just, it was just very refreshing. And I'm gonna say lifegiving for me, it really was you know, I would go through next level life again, and probably again, and probably again, because it's so powerful.

Chris LoCurto 29:03
If you want to experience the same kind of life transformation, the same kind of self-awareness and freedom that they have. Or maybe you're just curious about what the process would look like for you. Then head on over to Chris accredo.com/next level life

I don't care how you've mismanaged mishandled misappropriate and misjudged or misguided your time and money. Don't let that make you miss out on being the master of it now. Time and money you need both in this life right? Both your time and money need to be realised for what they are servants. Nothing more, nothing less. You are their master as God has entrusted you with both of these things. They're your gifts. And you need to master both. Since they're tethered together, time and money are connected. They're a package Just look at the compounding interest, for example. So here's the deal, you can use your time to make money. And to an extent having enough money can give you back a certain amount of free discretionary time. I will tell you as somebody who has been on both sides of not having any money and having plenty of money, the difference is when I no longer got worth from my money, and realise that this is a tool for God. My goal switch to how I use this for God, I can tell you that right now, a certain level of wealth gives you the ability to decide what you want to do with your time. So if we took Elon Musk, for example, after his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, he's no longer the world's richest man. But he's still incredibly wealthy and able to decide whether to work for money, you're not sure he's now crowdsourcing to pay off the platform's debts. But given enough time, he can regain what he's lost, and then some and I'm pretty darn sure he's going to do exactly that depending on his mastery of both resources. Whether he's a slave to either of those, I can't say, but what about you? Now I can tell you, I have my feelings. I feel like if Ilan had a solid relationship with God. And I'm only saying this because of an interview that I've seen, then I think his choices would change, I think his focus would change. I think those of you that have probably followed him a lot probably would agree with me, I don't follow him a lot. But I've seen enough about him to kind of know where he is on certain things. There are my assumptions. And he's a very smart man.

So I believe that if he had a better perspective on God, he would have a different perspective on how he handles his finances. But here's the deal, I want to leave you with an important question. Your answer here can actually defend you against becoming or staying a slave to time or money. How are you honouring God with your time and your money? God tells us to honour him with our time. God tells the children of Israel which by the way, if you are a faithful follower of God, you are a spiritual Israelite, you again, in the same inheritance, may not have been taught that because we do such a bad job teaching this type of stuff, you know, in church, but guess what? You've heard that you're going to get an inheritance, once the same inheritance, right? Because you've become one of his children. And what does he tell us to do? He tells us to honour remember and observe the Sabbath. Never take that away. That's something to know that doesn't make you some other religion. It doesn't make you some other denomination. It's coming to a place of discovering why does God want you to rest? Why is that an important thing? Why is that one of his 10 commandments that were never taken away? Once again, Pagan Christianity, read the book, get it? There are so many books out there. But this is a great one done by the research side, which people tend to be able to absorb easier. Why is it so important? Who is he talking to the children of Israel coming out of slavery? Now, he didn't Institute Sabbath, and the Exodus He instituted at the creation. And he gave us a commander honour at then that we're supposed to follow it. He reminded the children in the desert to follow it. And then he gave it as a command to as one of the 10 commandments at Mount Sinai. Why? Because he's helping us to understand that what we are worth is not in productivity to him. The slaves coming out of Egypt, their whole worth was in productivity. And God was helping them to understand I'm gonna give you six days to do whatever you want. But one day, I want you to rest and spend that time with me. All right. So honour it. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day, no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons, and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock and any foreigners living among you. For in six days, the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea and everything in them. But on the seventh day, he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day instead of the part that is holy. He gives us this day also to remind us that we were once slaves, but that he rescued us from bondage. Hello. We were once slaves to sin. Surely you've heard that preached? And he rescued us from bondage he gave is the gift of time and liberty to freely and willfully honour him with it.

So, if this is lining up and this is something that you're just like, gosh, I feel like this isn't. God is working on my heart on this. Spend time researching what the truth is about it. Once again, you are not hearing me point you to some different religion, some different denomination. I'm saying find out how paganism invaded your belief system, and you're following things from it. Then go read Deuteronomy 1230 through 31 and see how God feels about you doing anything that the pagans do anything, right? Why is this so important? Chris, why are you talking about this? Because having realised this years ago, it has absolutely blessed our lives, to do things the way that God wants our great father wants us to our loving dad wants us to. So I'm sharing this with you. hoping that people will make the decision to research to test this test everything God says test everything go test it in His Word, remove man's doctrine, and dig into God's word and see what he says about it. All right. So God reminds us that this is a gift that he has given us not to waste it, but instead to steward it to redeem it to make it work for us. The same principle is true with our money. Honour the Lord with your wealth. Proverbs three goes on to say honour Hamlet, the best part of everything you produce, He will fill your barns with grain and your vats will overflow with good wine. Guys, God is not a liar. He will bless you with roosters. So how do we honour God with our money? Understand that it's not about building an empire to consider tithing, if you haven't done that, consider giving to those who are in need that doesn't have. But it doesn't stop there. honouring him with a portion reminds us just like the Sabbath, not to be enslaved to money, nor to waste it. And guess what we need to be reminded of Honouring God with our time and our money reminds us that ultimately he is the true master of both time and money. And reminds us that we can't have two masters just like Jesus said he owns it all. He owns it all anyway. Or the understudies were the stewards. He's the eternal God of Time, and he owns the whole Earth and all its resources. The fact is that we will end up serving one and hating the other. Which one are you serving? And which one? Are you despising? God or time, God or money? It's a sobering thought, right?

Here's the good news. You are not serving time or money when you properly master them. Well, folks, that's all the time we have for today. And again, I want to tell you right now, if there's a struggle that you're experiencing with any of this, and you want to ask a question podcast at Chris liccardo.com Feel free, there's no offence if you want to tell me how crazy I am and how wrong I am and all How stupid I am. That's fine, feel free. My goal is to educate and help you to get to a better place and better understanding. So please feel free to reach out and talk about anything. You can do this. As always, we want you to take this information, change your leadership, change your business. absolutely change your life. And join us on the next episode.