{"id":975,"date":"2011-06-22T05:34:24","date_gmt":"2011-06-22T09:34:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godonomics\/?p=975"},"modified":"2011-06-21T15:21:28","modified_gmt":"2011-06-21T19:21:28","slug":"the-only-way-out-of-debt-is-to-kill-the-wabbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/the-only-way-out-of-debt-is-to-kill-the-wabbit.html","title":{"rendered":"The Only Way Out of Debt is to &#8220;Kill the Wabbit&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Biblical teaching about economics goes deep into our heart. The Bible says that until we place God at the center of our lives, and acknowledge that He is the source of our approval and identity, we will constantly be chasing things that only bring discontentment. This &#8220;Why Question\u201d is at the heart of it. Jesus said it this way:<\/p>\n<p><em>Luke 12:34\u00a0 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><em><strong>There\u2019s A Wabbit Behind Your Habit<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Remember Elmer Fudd tip-toeing across the field saying, \u201cShhhhh, you must bevwery, vwery, qui-et, I\u2019m hunting Wabbits.\u201d? The Bible says there is a wabbit behind every habit. Until we go hunting for the inner wabbits that are driving our habits, we will never make lasting changes. Every culture has offered different wabbits at different times. Some cultures elevate honor. Others elevate beauty. Some turn sexual intimacy into a wabbit. When we go wabbit hunting in our own hearts, we must keep in mind that wabbits are almost always good things that we turn into ultimate things. As long as our hearts are in love with some wabbit such as control, status, appearance, performance, or even money itself, our habits will always follow those longings-even if we know the decisions are unwise. We can try working harder to stay within our budgets.\u00a0 We can educate ourselves about finances. However, determination and education alone won\u2019t cut it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a heart problem first. That is why finances have everything to do with God.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>When money is our god\u2026<\/li>\n<li>When clothes are our god&#8230;<\/li>\n<li>When respect is our god&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We will consume and borrow in order to feed our god. Unfortunately, wabbits eat and eat and are never satisfied. Wabbits are a lot like that man-eating plant from Little Shop of Horrors, \u201cFeed Me Seymour! Feed Me!\u201d Looking inward presents us with the opportunity to find the REAL god in our lives. In fact, all other steps will be relatively worthless if we don&#8217;t look inward first. This is true individually and nationally. Our nation is consuming far, far, far more than it produces. We are over 14 trillion dollars in debt and have made promises into the future that reach estimates between 90-120 trillion dollars. We need fiscal responsibility. We\u00a0need to reject Keynesian nonsense, but until we deal with the national heart problem, we will drive ourselves into the ground. Deeper and deeper we\u2019ll spiral until we hurt everyone. Looking inward to correct the heart problem is step one in learning to act our own wage.<\/p>\n<p>For more information, check out<a href=\"http:\/\/godonomics.com\" target=\"_blank\"> www.godonomics.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>If you like the blog entry, click &#8220;like&#8221; above or sign up for the RSS feed. If you want to see all six thirty minute sessions on Godonomics, click to the right to order the APPS or the DVD.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;font-family: Times;font-size: medium\">[bcvideo vid=&#8221;<\/span><span style=\"color: black;font-family: Calibri;font-size: x-small\">919564251001&#8243;<\/span><span style=\"color: black;font-family: Times;font-size: medium\"> pid=&#8221;96582452001&#8243; height=&#8221;410&#8243; width=&#8221;480&#8243;]<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Biblical teaching about economics goes deep into our heart. The Bible says that until we place God at the center of our lives, and acknowledge that He is the source of our approval and identity, we will constantly be chasing things that only bring discontentment. This &#8220;Why Question\u201d is at the heart of it. Jesus&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85,72,75],"tags":[252,260,250,253,248,249,251],"class_list":["post-975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-debt","category-gospel","category-spending","tag-act-your-wage","tag-biblical-teaching-economics","tag-dealing-with-the-motivation-of-your-heart","tag-getting-on-a-budget","tag-money-and-god","tag-serving-god-and-mammom","tag-why-cant-i-change"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Only Way Out of Debt is to &quot;Kill the Wabbit&quot; - Godonomics<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, nofollow\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Only Way Out of Debt is to &quot;Kill the Wabbit&quot; - Godonomics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Biblical teaching about economics goes deep into our heart. The Bible says that until we place God at the center of our lives, and acknowledge that He is the source of our approval and identity, we will constantly be chasing things that only bring discontentment. This &#8220;Why Question\u201d is at the heart of it. Jesus&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/2011\/06\/the-only-way-out-of-debt-is-to-kill-the-wabbit.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Godonomics\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-06-22T09:34:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-06-21T19:21:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"chadhovind\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The Only Way Out of Debt is to \"Kill the Wabbit\" - Godonomics","robots":{"index":"noindex","follow":"nofollow"},"og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The Only Way Out of Debt is to \"Kill the Wabbit\" - Godonomics","og_description":"Biblical teaching about economics goes deep into our heart. The Bible says that until we place God at the center of our lives, and acknowledge that He is the source of our approval and identity, we will constantly be chasing things that only bring discontentment. This &#8220;Why Question\u201d is at the heart of it. 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He graduated from Moody Bible College in Chicago, majoring in pastoral ministry and communication. His love for ministry and creativity can be seen in many forms: leading teams, expository teaching, acting, and video production. He has served as pastor at two high-impact churches in Georgia: Cumberland Community Church and New Community Church. Chad received an M.A. in Ministry from Moody Graduate School in 2008. He loves volleyball, movies, and hanging out with his wife Beth and their three children.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.godonomics.com\/"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/author\/chadhovind"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=975"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":980,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/975\/revisions\/980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godonomics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}