Budgeting

Today Pastor Kong talked about budgeting our finances.

I think it was something that really spoke to me because I realized I haven't been budgetting my finances for a long time ever since my computer crashed.

Budgeting is basically planned spending. And as a leader, we need to know how to plan our lives before we plan others' lives.

Self-leadership is one of the toughest things to do, but seriously, if you don't have self-leadership in your life, how can you have leadership in your organization or your team.

Budgeting does not mean that you cut down on every area of your spending, but it means you plan for it, and then keep within that budget.

I am motivated to start creating a budgeting template for myself, for my daily income and expenditure as well as a monthly summary, which I did the last time.

I think it's a great way to keep ourselves from debt and from overspending. Good stewardship with our money is important because it shows the level of self-leadership in our lives.

We want to plan for an organization's budget well. First we got to do our personal budget well.

--------------------------

On a side note, life's been pretty low recently for me. I'm going through quite alot in my heart now.

Alot of past wounds are resurfacing again.

Alot of hurts.

Sometimes I'm tempted to bury all that, and become a hard-driven, independent person who is an 'overachiever'. I could. I'm very tempted to. So that I will never need anyone again.

I'm faced with a decision everyday. I could choose to hide all the wounds and become an angry, hard person. Or I can bare my wounds in front of God, and let all that pain come in, and allow myself to grieve for the wounds.

It's going to hurt. But I guess it's the only way to the life God promised me.

When we kill our hearts along our journey in life in order to become 'stronger', in eseence we kill off our relationship with God, because in our hearts we're really resolving to say that," God, I don't need You in my life anymore. I can do life myself."

Sometimes when we choose we live from our hearts, allow our hearts to surface that we get hurt by people; by our team, by people we love. When we open our hearts like that, we open up ourselves to a risk. The risk of getting hurt and disappointed.

But then how, do we choose to kill our hearts because it hurts us, maybe for some of us, most of the time? Or do we choose to continue living from our hearts, because it is only with our hearts that we can do life well, with our whole body, soul and spirit.

Without our hearts, we cannot pray.

When we choose to kill our own desires, we cannot pray anymore. We don't need God when we don't have desire in our hearts. We don't need anything out of our control. We seek to control our environment by our own efforts. Whatever we cannot control, we kill or shut down.

Why then, we could get by much easier.

No more hurts, no more tears.

But we miss the point then.

The point of life is to experience its pain, hurt, love, joy in its fullness. To experience every emotion fully. The abundant life that Jesus promised in John 10:10.

Sigh.

I know very well what my heart is thinking and what decisions my heart is trying to make, but it doesn't make it any easier.