The national pastime has become a sacred holiday: shopping on “Black Friday.” The day after Thanksgiving has developed into a manic state of sales and spending as retailers, seeking bigger holiday profits, offer new bargains and longer hours to lure holiday shoppers to good deals and great values on amazing products. The spending hype reaches fever pitch as stores open earlier and earlier each year, replacing the day dedicated to gratefulness with unashamed greed and giddiness for a purchase that is meant to show our love for another, bought in rushes of grabbing items that has led to fights, stampedes and debt. Many justify this intense season of shopping with the value of the purchase – the money saved on an item they would buy at a higher price later indicates this was a good value-based purchase.

However, I’d like to offer a new way of thinking about our value-based spending and money as the shopping season begins in earnest. My encouragement is to plan how you spend your money, and not just for holiday shopping but also for the entire year, based on your spiritual values. In Acts 5:4, the Apostle Peter declares to Ananias, “Didn’t [the property] belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? ...” This indicates an important principle about money: we must own the choices we make with money. The money at our disposal is available for us to use in many ways, some honoring to God while others are made under sinful influences (Acts 5:3). I propose the driving factors in the spending decisions are to be the values by which we orientate our lives accordingly.

Value-based spending is prioritizing our financial choices. These values are shaped by our worldview. The secularized popular worldview’s focus for money is on “getting”. Even Christian schools of higher education are guilty of this priority, as we have promoted (even if partially) that our degree programs are tracks to better and higher paying jobs. This “getting” a job often leads to a desire to getting more money in the pursuit of bonuses, raises, second jobs, which all become a maddening chase. We justify the energy given to “getting” with the thought that we can enjoy more; or perhaps we even have the noble pursuit of providing more for our families. However, often we enjoy too much or we enjoy too soon, beyond what our finances can afford, so we end up in debt both in the short-term and the long-term. So the third financial priority choice is debt repayment. Eventually we may recognize a need to save for the future and hope that someday we can give some to others. Planning is often an afterthought for most people. However, these last choic