"Hey, can I borrow a quarter? I promise I will pay you back."
It was my sophomore year in high school when a girl at a pay phone (Yes, not everyone had cell phones) asked for money.
I either responded, "No. I don't have any or no, I don't know you and there's no way you're going to pay me back."
She responded along the lines of, "Forget you!"
I never seen this lady before, nor have I seen her since, yet she still promised to pay me back.
What was the chances that was going to happen?
Was I at fault for not giving her random money?
People often did this at school in regards to different matters and it always ended with I promise to pay you back.
I wish this stopped at high school, but as an adult it gets worse.
Instead of lunch money it's "Our heats getting turned off, can you help heat our house for our children?"
Or a friend needing $1,500 to fix their vehicle so they can go to work.
The cost goes up and more is at stake when we get older.
Are we bad people for asking for help? Or are we bad people if we say no?
This popped in my head while reading Matthew 5 verse 42…
"Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you."
This is one of many texts that could easily be taken out of context (Which happens a lot with scripture).
If you just look at this scripture it looks like your should give to everyone no matter what you have.
The section of scripture is titled "An eye for an eye."
It also says if a person strikes you turn the other check and take it on that side.
The message behind this is to go the extra mile.
When trying to resolve a problem, try to go more than the bare minimum to solve the problem.
Do more than saying I'm sorry to another person. Instead, go further to help another. Say I'm sorry then treat them to coffee.
When we get in money problems, it's a tough road to head.
Dave Ramsey gives some amazing stories about problems with lending to friends or borrowing money.
He backs it up with scripture like, "The borrower is slave to the lender."
He talks about the fact people will lose friends over money being owed to one another.
Last year we put ourselves in a bad situation where we had to come up with $7,500.
I won't go into details, but it was an awful situation.
In order to get out of the situation, we had some friends that were willing to lend us the money.
We decided against it and took out a loan to pay the lender back.
We were not anywhere close to a financial position to pay our friends back.
I am glad we didn't do that. It would have put a strain in our friendship.
But it's also great to have friends that are willing to do that for us.
Ramsey says if you lend to a friend or a relative, don't expect the money back (This deal with co-signing too).
We are in a predicament right now.
There is an offer on our house. The offer would require bringing $20,000-30,000 in closing.
Hailee and I have been praying about this for the past couple of days.
Do we take out a loan to pay off our house?
What would we be willing to lose on this deal?
It's a hard decision.
We have decided that we don't want to take out more loans then we have too.
We are going to make a drastic counter offer and see if this works out.
We don't want to have to borrow money, but we don't want to lose out on a buyer.
Have you gone through a situation like this?
How did you come out of it?
We don't want to make a promise we can't keep.
Hailee and I are praying over this matter, because we know God brought us to Terre Haute for a reason and he's going to bring us out of this house deal too.
Have a great day.
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