Category: How to Manage Yourself Book

by Tim Howington

Chapter One

 Managing Yourself When There is No Money to Manage

 I attended a college meeting once where the speaker asked for a couple of volunteers from the audience to come and illustrate a point he was making.  He chose a big burly football player and a petite cheerleader type gal.  He had a large clear pitcher of water, filled to the rim.  He handed this to the cheerleader and told her that her task was to keep the water from spilling out of the pitcher.  He then told the football player that his task was to make her spill the water.  Well, as you can guess the football player was successful. The speaker then turned to the audience and asked “why did water spill out of the pitcher?”  The audience was split: some said it was her fault; some said it was his.  Then the speaker made a profound statement that I have never forgotten.  He said, “Water spilled out of the pitcher because water was in the pitcher.”  He then went on to explain that life will bump us from time to time and whatever is in our hearts will spill out. Continue reading “Chapter One- Managing Yourself When There is No Money to Manage” →

by Tim Howington

This book is the by-product of a painful process of financial anxiety over about a 12 month period where the Lord sustained my family by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin.  We paid every bill, ate every meal, and never lost our housing, transportation or the clothes on our back.  So, by those standards we were very blessed, and to some degree, we learned to be content.

But, every night I prayed diligently for the Lord to intervene in our lives.  Every day I worked hard to secure the funds we needed to survive.  And while I desperately wanted the “Lord’s will” to be financial stability in my family’s life, I knew that there was something else going on that was bigger than just me paying bills on time.  The Lord was stripping me of my pride and my independence.  The Lord was teaching me about how to manage my spirit when there was no money (little money) to manage.  The Lord was connecting me to the needs of families all around me who are living paycheck to paycheck and asking themselves if God can be trusted. Continue reading “How to Manage Yourself When There is No Money to Manage – Intro” →