Welcome to our live show!

Dr. A'Shellarien Addison Addison, airing Sunday mornings at 9:45. This is your respite from life to steal away and take care of you. Trauma continuously collides with our faith. Let this 15 minutes be my gift to you as I walk with you on your healing journey. Over the next 15 minutes, we are going to talk about mastery over money, empowerment, nutrition, and trauma. Let's jump right in. Today's topic is money, money, money, money. So listen to these words in Luke 21:1-4. This is the Amplified Version of the Bible. Looking up, he saw the rich people putting their gifts into the treasury, and he saw a poor widow putting in two small copper coins. He said, truly I say to you, this poor widow has put in proportionately more than all of them, for they all put in gifts from their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on. I want you to look at yourself in the mirror and say, I am giving all I got. I am giving all I got, baby. I was at the gas station the other day and it was over $4, and I said, this don't make no sense that this gas should be this high. And I thought about, at this point, I'm not even gonna drive unless it's necessary. I went to the grocery store and I saw some eggs for $12. Now, they was cage eggs, they was brown eggs. I had never seen no eggs for $12. I was looking at all the food in the store and I was like, man, people are really struggling. People are really, really struggling. I don't know about you, but sometimes I wonder why have we gotten to this point when there's so much abundance in the world. I was watching, like, you know, in Philly we all excited about LeBron James. You know how much money LeBron getting? You know how much money is bringing to Philadelphia? Are you getting all this money and you still got people who can't pay for groceries? People still can't put gas in their car. People can't get to work. There's a lot going on in this country right now. So I want to talk about giving all I got. I was having this conversation with somebody about tithing, and we know that tithing typically is 10%, right? And then the question became, what if you're on a fixed income and all of your bills are automatically deducted from your account? Like, what happens when there is no 10%? Like your rent, your electric, your gas, your food. Like, what if all of that stuff is coming out of your account to the point where you, you have nothing left? Like, is God gonna be mad? Y'all gonna be like, you know, I don't see my tithe today. And then I was thinking, I remember there was a time I was at this church and this pastor said— was asking for this offering, and the pastor said, if you don't have enough to cover your bills, that means you're supposed to give it in the offering. All right, so think about this, right? You say, God, I need you to help me, I need you to help provide, right? Because the Bible said God should supply all my needs according to his riches and glory. You like, God, I need to pay my car payment, I need to pay my I need to pay my rent, all this stuff. You talking about, God, I need you to do it. And then God give you the money to do it, but then you go to church, you go to church, excuse me, and then you give all your bill money in the offering. Okay, that's one way to look at it, right? And then you say, okay, God's going to replenish. But you just ask God to give you what you needed and then you put it all— and I'm not saying don't pay your tithes, and I'm not saying don't give an offering. If you ask God to bless you to pay a bill, pay the bill. All right, so here goes this lady, right? She— they give an offering and Jesus sees her give these two small copper coins, right? So she's given all she has, right, believing that God's gonna bless her. We don't see what happens after that. We don't see, you know, what that really meant for her. We see the principle of it and we say that's an amazing thing that you give all you got. And so I think about tithing, I think about we tithe our time, our talent, and our substance. So what happens when you don't have the talent? That's what the money was called back in the day, was called the talent. What happens if you don't have any money, right? Does that mean that you, you, you know, you're not as much of a Christian? You're not as much as a member of the church? Like, let's just talk about it, right? If you got to choose between gas in your car right, to get to church or watching church online? Does that— what does that mean? Does that mean you're less faithful because you say, wait a minute, I got to get to work, so I'm gonna watch this online? What does it mean when you have to choose between $5 in an offering or $5 to get some breakfast? Like, what is— what does that mean, right? Faith without works is dead. So you can look at this a couple different ways. You can say by faith You just might get to church and somebody have breakfast for you free. You just might get to church, put in your $5, and then you hungry. Like, there's other ways to see this. And I'm not saying one way or the other is bad or good or indifferent. All I'm saying is let's look at what's really happening. There are people who are struggling who have a heart to give and don't have any money. That doesn't make them any less a Christian. It doesn't make them any less a member of the church. If you don't have it, you don't have it. Now, when you have it and you refuse to give it, that's a whole nother thing. That's a whole nother topic. That's a whole nother Sunday at 9:45. I'm talking about the people who have a heart to give and don't have any money. Like this woman, she had a heart to give and gave what she had. And for those of us who are on the spectrum of finances, right, because there's other ways that you can, you know, you can make money legally, you can make money illegally. It's all about choices. Now I'm a proponent and I'm an advocate for making money legally, right? And when you get that money, you want to give God your best. You want to give God the fruit of your labor, right? So that you'll be blessed. And what I'm saying is there are people out there who just don't have any other money. I'm telling you, I remember back in the day when I was raising my kids, I was on, um, financial assistance and I had food stamps. And so at the beginning of the month, the food stamps would come and the financial assistance would come. It was also time to pay rent. It was also time to pay the car payment. It was also time to pay the car insurance. It was also time to pay the electric. It was also time to pay the water. It was also time— like, it was also— it's always time for stuff. Bills, bills, bills, bills. And sometimes your money is funny, your change is strange. There's a bunch of stuff going on and you want to give, and you're like, God, if I had it, I'd give it. And so what I'm saying to you is, when you give all you got like this woman, you got to understand the parameters of your life. If you're on a fixed income and all your money comes out of your direct deposit, then you say, God, help me, help me figure out a way, right? Because the Bible says God will give you power to get wealth. And so if you have different avenues, different ways, different side hustles that we do, you know, then you'll be able to give. I'm just a— I'm just a believer that God is not going to hold us hostage to the fact that gas prices are high, food is high, inflation is high. Things are crazy right now. And so you got to consider, if all your bills are coming to your account and there's nothing left, then you got to ask God to open up another stream of income. You gotta say, okay, if what I want to do is pay my tithes, then that means I've got to do something else. I got to do— I got to make some dinners. I got— you know what I mean? Don't think that God is going to say you cannot enter the kingdom because all your money is gone. Like, we've got this misconception about what it means to give all we have. If, if you're struggling, if you don't know what to do, that's why the Bible says forsake not the assembly of the believer. It matters who your pastor is. It matters where your church is. It matters who Who gives you guidance? You know, the Bible says people perish for the lack of knowledge. We don't get the financial education that we need. We're not learning how to save. You spending $200 on Jordans, or you could be putting that money in some sort of Roth IRA. See, we need to have these conversations about how to save, how to invest for our future. How many of us been working for years and never put money in retirement? So now you still working at 75. Like, these are the things that we need to talk about. We need to talk about financial planning. We need to talk about end-of-life planning. We need to talk about savings. We need to talk about getting our kids a checking account so they learn how to manage their money from a young age. We need to get away from these credit cards and going in debt. We need to talk about credit, and we need to talk about how do, how do I establish credit? How do I fix credit? How do I get business credit? How do I become an entrepreneur? These are all things we need to talk about. So that you're not at a point where all you got is two mites. This is what I'm saying. We got to work smart and not hard. We have such a— an ability. The Bible says God gives us the power to get well. That's right. But you also have to do the work, right? You using ChatGPT to do everything else? Ask ChatGPT, how do I come up with a financial plan for my life? How do I find a side hustle? How do I do residual income? Ask ChatGPT, all that stuff, and then you'll be able to say, all right, you know, I could give all I got, right? You can't be a blessing broke. You can't be a blessing broke. And so what does it mean to look at various streams of income? What does it mean to be an entrepreneur? What does it mean to wake up and God give you an idea and put that idea into place? Let me tell you something, AI is amazing. We have no more excuses why we can't do stuff because a lot of AI is free. So listen, like this woman, you want to give all you got, and all thy getting, get understanding. We want to be able to manage our money in a better way. All right, that's our time for today. I pray something you heard today has blessed you. I would love to hear from you, so go to my website and leave me a message. My website is desicajoesflow.com. Addisonjoseph.com, or you can hit me up on Instagram. I'm Dr. A'Shellarien Addison. I'm Dr. A'Shellarien Addison on TikTok. Whichever way you want to go, you can Google me. I am Googleable. All right, so until next week, may the love of God hold you, may the peace of God keep you, and may the joy of the Lord keep you in the rough times. So you keep holding on to God's unchanging hand, and you tell that devil, get some way and sit down.