What Does “Personal Finance for Life in the Kingdom” Mean?

The tagline for Provident Planning used to be “Personal Finance from a Christian Perspective”. And though that was clear and got the gist of what I wanted to focus on here, it still missed something major. What makes Provident Planning different from any other Christian personal finance site?

So a while back I decided to change the tagline to the current one – “Personal Finance for Life in the Kingdom”. It’s a little more obscure, but I think it comes closer to answering that question.

My hope is to focus on personal finance in a way that starts with the understanding that we, as followers of Jesus, have our primary life in the Kingdom of God. It’s eternal life, but it’s an eternal life that we’re already living now. It doesn’t just start at death.

So anything we do has to start from that perspective – including personal finance. It’s far too easy for me to take regular, good personal finance advice and try to add a Christian spin to it. That’s generally what happens in the Christian finance realm. And while I think we mean well, we can miss the broader picture of what Jesus has called us to.

By putting the focus on personal finance as it works in our life in the Kingdom, my desire is to start from a thoroughly Kingdom-focused perspective and understand what personal finance is meant to look like there. I feel that I’ve been sidetracked in the past by starting with a “worldly” personal finance focus and then trying to understand how the Kingdom of God works in that context. Wrong approach.

So “Personal Finance for Life in the Kingdom” is supposed to mean that what you’ll find here at Provident Planning is centered around the Kingdom life.

• It’s about trying to look at all aspects of personal finance in light of eternity.
• It’s about trying to understand how what we’re doing now fits into the economy of God rather than our economy.
• And it’s about trying to keep our heart focused on our treasures in heaven while staying free from the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things.

Now a tagline is just a tagline. It doesn’t mean much unless I stick to it. So I’m asking you all to help me keep this focus. It isn’t easy when we’re being swamped by a culture that drowns us with false ideas of “the good life” all the time. I need your help in keeping that Kingdom perspective throughout everything I write or do.

So leave a comment in a post if you think I missed something. Or just send me an email through my contact page. Walk alongside me as I walk alongside you, and let’s help each other grab hold of the prize.