Love Jesus, Love Others, Live an abundant life

When I launched Silver Strand Financial Planning the vision that I had was to help people love Jesus, love others and live a financially healthy abundant life. It is a great vision for a company, but how do you really work towards that and what does that actually mean. Over the past 12 months, I have been able to begin to define this better. For me, it actually comes down to two words: Generosity and Stewardship. Where does this begin, it begins with the belief that God owns it all, and if God owns it all then we are stewards of what He has blessed us with. Part of stewardship is taking care of one’s family but another part of stewardship is realizing that what God gives us is also to be used to help those around us. This helps us to love Jesus instead of money (Mathew 6:24), helps us to love others by living a generous life (2 Corinthians 9:7) and in the end provides an abundant life for us because we are living in light of God’s provision (Mathew 6:25-34). Does living a generous life guarantee us that we will be given everything that we want, hope for, or even need, absolutely not, but it does allow us to align our heart with God’s and how He views His world.

For me, this journey has been eye opening. I believe I would have said that I believe that God owns it all before, but I am not sure that I lived that way or viewed “my stuff” that way. I had an interesting conversation with a colleague at the Kingdom Advisors conference about ownership. He asked me what I do in the financial planning world and I responded with, “I own my own firm”. He quickly responded with “I think that you mean that God led you to start a firm and that you now work at a firm that God owns.” Wow! So now if you ask me what I do you will hear from me that I founded a firm that God owns.

So what does that make me? I have come to the conclusion that I am a Stewardship Advicer. This may seem like a strange title for someone who works in the financial industry, but this has been truly transformational for me. I have spent 20 + years wondering and struggling with helping people gain more money and feeling like I have been missing what truly matters. So I define a Stewardship Advicer as someone who who provides advice and guidance to empower people to live generously for the glory of God and worship the King of Kings with the resources that He has provided by making wise decisions with cash flow, planning for the future, and living a generous life. You may be asking if this involves financial planning, investment management, risk tolerance and all of those other things that you have come to expect from traditional financial advisor relationships. The answer is an emphatic YES! We need to be wise stewards with what God has given us and financial planning, investment management, risk tolerance and so much more are necessary to do this. However, my goal is not to help rich people get richer, but for people to become more like Jesus through the process of providing financial advice, guidance and counseling.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I am going to be providing additional information around generosity, charitable giving, and techniques that you can employ to help you be a wise steward with what God has blessed you with. I will also highlight some of the technology that I have implemented to help you live as a responsible steward, and also provide information about how the processes used at Silver Strand Financial Planning will help guide you through the twists and turns of life.