Our Guest Craig Hill
Sid: We want every one everywhere to get a handle on your finances so that you will really be the head and not the tail, but make sure that the spirit behind it is not a wrong spirit. That’s why I have on the telephone right now I’m speaking to him at his headquarters in Littleton, Colorado, Craig Hill who is the founder of Family Foundations International. They conduct seminars having to do with the family, and I got a hold of his teachings titled “God’s Principals of Finance.” Now my background is finance, I have interviewed many men and women on this subject and this is the freshest approach and the most Biblical approach I have ever seen and that’s why I have him on the air. On yesterday’s broadcast we were talking about a scripture that we’re all familiar with Matthew chapter 6 verse 24 “And you can’t serve God and mammon.” Most people even some Bibles translate mammon as money, but Craig you found out that it has another meaning and actually makes more sense when you realize what Jesus really meant by that meaning of mammon.
Craig: Yeah that’s right we were talking yesterday about the fact that that word mammon doesn’t actually mean money but it was talking about an idolatrous god worshipped by Philistine people at the time of Jesus. Of course the demonic principality or spirit behind that god that influences people’s minds and influences people’s emotions. We were saying yesterday there are two basic ways that that spirit does that, or there are two primary things just like any spirit. What it wants of course is worship unto itself, and it wants the allegiance of people’s hearts. It wants your heart to give allegiance to it, obviously nobody would do that on purpose so it has to deceive to do that. So what it does is it causes people to greatly fear the lack of money and to make money very very important, or money is the goal, then God becomes the means. So what happens when the spirit of mammon is involved is the master slave relationship is inverted. Money becomes the master and God becomes our servant to get us money.
Sid: You know I hear what you’re saying and I hear many people seem to say the right words “I want you to give to my ministry so you will have money to give to other ministries.”
Craig: Right.
Sid: And that’s a correct stance…
Craig: That’s right.
Sid: …but still behind it is the greed principle, or as you put it “A false god by the name of mammon.”
Craig: That’s right. That actually captures people’s hearts and I think sometimes as Christian leaders we actually can play upon that fear that spirit has created in people’s heart of not having enough money, and cause money to be the end, money to be the goal, and we’re using Biblical principles then to tell people then “If you will just do this or do that we’re going to use God to get money as opposed to just the opposite,” which would be the truth. We’re going to use money to expand the kingdom of God. So money is meant to be our servant not our master. Just when you think about how powerful that really is. If the Holy Spirit were to speak to someone today “I want you to go on a mission trip to China in 3 months’ time.” Do you know that most Christians would immediately say in their own mind “How am I going to get the money?” The governing factor is not the Holy Spirit, the governing factor is the money.
Sid: So then when you go back to Matthew 6:24 “You can’t serve both you either serve that governing spirit, or you serve God.”
Craig: That’s right and the issue is to which one has your heart given over an allegiance because the issue is there would be people listening to the broadcast… as a matter of fact Sid I bet you there are people have tuned into the broadcast because they heard we were talking about this today. The reason you tuned into the broadcast is because you wanted to find out “How can solve all of my financial problems? How can I get out of debt? How can I make money?” What we’re saying is God wants to accomplish those purposes but that not’s the goal, the goal is not “How can I get more money?” The goal is “I want to serve God, how can I pursue God?” Money then becomes a tool, or money becomes a… my servant to expand the kingdom of God. You know we’ve found some of the symptoms of this spirit of mammon are really interesting. A lot of things people wouldn’t necessarily think of but how gripping this spirit really is in terms of grabbing ahold of people’s minds and demanding allegiance to it. I thought of 10 different symptoms of this spirit of mammon. You know this is an interesting thing I thought, money actually is impotent. Money has no power God has power, the spirit of mammon has power and your heart is going to go after one of the two of those, but in reality money is impotent. But until a person recognizes how impotent money truly is his heart will never be free from its pursuit. So a person will continue to pursue money as long as he believes that’s where the real power is, whereas in reality the power is with God, or mammon and your heart is going to be given over to one of the two of those. But in terms of talking about the symptoms of mammon here would be some of the symptoms that I’ve found Sid:
- Simply worry and anxiety over money. People that lie awake at night would worry in anxiety.
- Mismanagement of money. “I don’t know where it all went.” Or in other words, too much month left at the end of the money.
- Never having enough. You know I found out what afflicts either rich people or poor people, some people would not recognize that even people that have great sums of money or asset values still never have enough. So in other words you’re consistently spending 120% of the resource that’s available it doesn’t matter what is available you never have enough.
- A mentality of “I can’t afford it. No matter how much I have I can’t afford it.” I know one man that has probably over $3 million in assets but has great difficulty of letting go of money to purchase clothing for his family because, and he always says “Well we can’t afford it.” Well obviously he CAN but that’s a mentality that that spirit creates.
- Another symptom would be impulse buying “Can’t turn down the deals.” A lot of times you’ll have… this’ll create tremendous arguments between husbands and wives. One will come home having purchased something and the other one will say “Well what is that for? What do we need that for?” The one who purchased it says “I don’t know but I got a deal. It was cheap.” So an inability to turn down things that we would buy on impulse.
- Stinginess would be another one. Sort of the thing that goes along with that is a fear of tithing. Many many people have a sense that tithing is the right thing to do but there’s a tremendous fear if “I ever began to do that I would perish.” So I need to hang on to everything I have. A symptom of that spirit’s influence.
- Greed would be another symptom. I define that as an inordinate desire to acquire or possess.
- Discontentment would be an 8th
- Bondage to debt. Many many people in this nation have a tremendous bondage to debt that’s just overwhelming to them. Then the last one that I noticed is:
- An exaggerated importance of money and overestimate of its power. When you hear people talk about somebody that has a lot of money they talk as though that were a very valuable person. Somebody who doesn’t have any money is sort of a not valuable person. So there’s an exaggerated importance of money overestimate of its power.
Again Sid I believe if we don’t recognize the spirit behind that and deal with that, that what’s going to happen is many of us know the things to do, we know that we ought to live on a budget. We know ought to tithe, we know we ought to be giving offerings, we know we ought to get out of debt but I find so many people have an absolute inability to do the things they know and the reason that is they’ve never dealt with the spirit that has grabbed ahold of their mind and all the emotions and thoughts that go along with that that they don’t even recognize have been operative in their life for years and years and years.
Sid: What you point out is this spirit has a name.
Craig: Yes.
Sid: His name is mammon.
Craig: Hmm hm.
Sid: He’s been around a long time but then you say if you don’t get free of that spirit it links with other spirits.
Craig: It’ll link with other spirits and it’ll couple with other areas of iniquity. Bitterness it’ll couple with often times. It can couple with greed, it can couple with other types of emotions that sort of thing and really influence people’s lives. We see an example of that in Acts chapter 8 where we find the man Simon the sorcerer who wanted to buy the Holy Spirit with money. Again the issue there was a spirit of mammon operative in his life that had coupled with what Peter described as the gull of bitterness and had really twisted his mind around in thinking that he could buy the power of God with money. Again just the opposite of what Jesus had in mind.
Sid: Once you recognize it’s a spirit, what do you do about it?
Craig: I think the first thing to do is to repent for allowing it to grab hold of a person’s mind. A lot of times I’ve found it’s generational it’s come through several generations of time. So…
Sid: I’ve noticed most of these curses are generational like an alcoholic you’ll find there’s alcoholics in the family.
Craig: Yep.
Sid: But you mean even the poverty and there are problems with money run in generations.
Craig: I think it does. A lot of times a lot of us are of the age group that our parents went through the depression. So we heard time and time again “You’ve got to be careful. You could lose everything. You’ve got to be very attentive to money, collect all the money you can , save it for a rainy day and be very careful.” Again what it does it directs people’s attention off of God and makes God simply the means to get money, but money is the real answer.
Sid: Now have you seen people take your seminar and their lives changed by getting rid of this spirit of mammon.
Craig: We’ve seen so many people changed Sid it’s unbelievable and changed in practical results in terms of practical financial results but also to see the pressure lifted off of somebody, to see the fear come off somebody. To see somebody’s focus really return to be on God…
Sid: I imagine a lot of marriages are saved just by getting at this spirit.
Craig: That really is true because that spirit just wreaks havoc in a marriage. If you go to a divorce court you’ll hear probably I think 80% of the divorces have a tremendous influence of money and arguments over money…
Sid: Give me one specific case that comes to mind of someone that’s applied these principles and had help.
Craig: You know there was a young woman that came to a seminar in New Zealand. When we began talking she initially came and said “I felt like I had a pretty good handle on my finances.” She wrote me later she said “You know I found out that it wasn’t a handle it was a grip that I had fine finances.” She said “I know idea it was a spirit of mammon” but what she did on one of the evenings we were talking about tithing and that was just intently scary to her and her husband because there was no way she could live on 100% of her income she couldn’t see a way that she could possibly begin to tithe. But to make a long story short she and her husband made a commitment in their heart that they were going to tithe and trust God to be their provider. You know the day they made that commitment they had a supernatural release of finances that came to them that just changed their financial situation…
Sid: Oh Craig we’re out of time!
