Unstuck: The Debt Trap | Part 2

**Ryan Ingram** (0:00)
Welcome to the Awakening Church Podcast. We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.
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**Ryan Ingram** (0:19)
can full podcast on the website www.unstuck.com Last week, we asked this question, how do you get unstuck in the significant areas of life? Just to forecast a little bit ahead, week four, we're gonna talk about loneliness and friendship. Week five, how to get unstuck in relational conflict. Week six, unstuck when it comes to work and stress, work-life balance and demands. Today and next week, we're gonna spend two weeks on this subject. We did a survey in the fall, asking what's been most difficult for you this year. The number one answer was anxiety. We're gonna do a whole series around that later on in the spring. The second thing that came up, the pressures and the demand, was this area of finances. Just financial pressures, stress, overwhelm. And we wanna wrestle with this today. How do you get unstuck financially? We live, there's economic uncertainty, inflation, so just rising interest rate, housing market, just, it's just still crazy. And tech layoffs. How do you get unstuck financially? And really, this question, can you really experience financial freedom in the Silicon Valley? Like in the midst of all of that, can you really experience freedom financially? Now, before we dive into this conversation, or as we do, it's important to like, build this one kind of fundamental idea when it comes to our finances. And it's simply this, personal finances are more personal than financial. Your personal finances are far more personal than they are financial. And this is what makes it actually really difficult for us to talk about, to be open about, to get help in, because it feels so very personal. It feels exposing, doesn't it? It feels threatening. There's things that we go like, no, no, no, I'll just kind of hide that. Personal finance are deeply emotional, aren't they? Even as we begin to talk about finances today, it's like, that comes with this feeling of stress for some walked in pressure, feeling maybe discouraged, defeated, overwhelmed. It brings, can bring deep anxiety, right? Personal finances are more personal than they are financial. And so, as we dive into this, I want you just to simply go acknowledge that reality and go, okay, Heavenly Father, would you speak to me?
Would you break down some of my defenses and my barriers because I really need some help. Today, we're going to dive in to the subject I'm calling the Debt Trap, the Debt Trap. America is a nation in debt. You've heard of doom-scrolling, but what we've begun doing is doom spending. 96% of Americans are concerned with the state of the economy, but continue to spend more and save less. 73% of Gen Z would rather live in the moment than cut spending. The result is we're ultimately undercutting our future.
And there's this feeling of stress and anxiousness and discouragement. Total credit card debt in the US has risen to $1.2 trillion. Average per household, not per person, per household, is $20,000 of credit card debt. 49% of Americans carry debt month to month on at least one card. Now, to understand the impact of that, think about this. Interest rates right now have skyrocketed. They're at 20.74%, making the minimum payments on an average credit card balance, which is around $6,000 per credit card. It would take more than 17 years to pay off the debt and cost more than $9,000 in interest on that $6,000 loan.
Anybody stress starting to go up already? Okay, all right, yeah. Total student loan debt, $1.6 trillion. Average student loans is about $55,000. Total auto loan debt is $1.6 trillion. Average household spends about $35,000 in debt.
A Fortune Magazine said, Now here's the incredibly good news. If you walked in stuck financially, if you walked in stressed financially, if you walked in and, well, there's more month at the end of your paycheck. You've run to the end of your paycheck, but there's still days, and you're trying to figure out how to get through it, and you live under this pressure. If there is this sense that your financial pressure is impacting the relationships that matter most, is becoming arguments and fights, maybe with your spouse or with your friends, the good news is God wants to help you. The good news is God wants to help you get unstuck. In fact, as you know, in the book of Proverbs, somewhere around 130 Proverbs are all on finances. That's roughly about 14% of the entire book of Proverbs, and even the entire Bible, about a little over 2,500 verses on finances alone. Jesus is teaching the parables, roughly 40% of His parables were on finances. And here's the thing, God knows that finances, your personal finances, are more personal than it is financial, and it impacts you personally, and He wants to help you. And there's hope today to get out of the debt trap. And when I was newly married, we were living in Chicago, I was finishing up school, and then I was part-time at a church, and Jenny and I were part of this small group, it was right downtown, as part of our church, and they did this financial series, and I remember this still to this day, this set us up so well as we started off our marriage, and then they had us memorize this verse, and so we're like in our small group reciting it to each other and learning more about God's wisdom for our finances and how to steward our finances well, and this was the verse they had us memorize. The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender. Will you go ahead and say that with me? The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender. In fact, we're going to be memorizing this together. I'm asking you to, you can do this just today during our time, you know, the few minutes we're together, right? But would you review it daily, keep it in front of you? Now, here's what the wisdom of God says, because in our day, the way we think about debts, consumer debt and even credit card debt is this idea that it is a pathway to freedom. It's the pathway and opens doors and unlocks things that we were unable previously to get, to have. And what he's saying here is not that debt is necessarily prohibited or wrong, but we ought to be very cautious in accumulating or acquiring debt. Why? Because debt fundamentally at some point isn't necessarily this pathway per se to freedom, but it can very, in very reality, become a chain to bondage, can it?