‘O Lord , you have examined my heart and know everything about me. You know when I sit down or stand up. You know my thoughts even when I’m far away. You see me when I travel and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I am going to say even before I say it, Lord . You go before me and follow me. You place your hand of blessing on my head. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to understand! I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night— but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you. You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, you are still with me!’ Psalms 139:1-18(NLT)
The way to financial well-being is a returning home to your deepest sense of self, which is rooted and nurtured in God’s love. So much financial teaching begins from the outside and sometimes works its way in. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve started the journey of tending to this aspect of your interior life. You’ve discovered a little more about who you are and how God has designed you. Now you can start to see beyond the traditional notions that people must fit a specific money mold and that there is only one right way to think and feel about finances. The way you relate to money stems from the way you relate to God, from the unique way you are God-wired to encounter the world and its resources.
Understanding that it is God who has designed you to think, feel, and act the way you do financially gives you the courage to embrace your type, while continually growing and maturing in how you relate to God and money. Once you’ve embraced your own type, you’ll create space for others to be who they are, and you’ll be positioned to understand them and relate to them in a way that enhances your own, and their own, financial well-being.
You’re free to embrace your money type when you understand that no one type is better than another, and that God designed each type. This realization gives you permission to listen to your own financial thoughts, emotions, and actions and discern how God has designed you and may want you to grow in your relationship to money.
Financial well-being is within your reach as you grow in your money type. You can possess the confidence and insight necessary to handle money in a God-honoring way that’s true to your deepest sense of self and healthy in emotional, spiritual, and relational ways. Embrace your money type as a core component of your identity, as a sacred aspect of who you understand yourself to be—a God-imaged person who is God’s partner in stewarding resources, loving others, and bringing hope into the world.
from The Seven Money Types