Introduction

Is money evil? Should Christians be rich? What does the Bible really say about wealth?
Many believers struggle with finances due to mixed messages. But Scripture provides clear wisdom about money management. In this post, discover 6 Biblical money foundations that help you enjoy wealth without guilt and handle finances God’s way. This will help you in Faith and finances. You will learn about Godly wealth principles and Christian money tips. It covers managing money God’s way as well as spiritual and financial freedom. You will also explore Biblical investing, tithing, and blessings.

Watch the full video breakdown on our Faith & Fortune Finance YouTube channel [embedded below].

___________________

1. God Owns Everything—We Are Just Stewards

Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”

God owns it all—your money, house, gifts, even your ideas.
You’re not the owner. You’re the steward.

Action Steps:

• Shift from ownership to stewardship
• Ask God how to manage what He’s entrusted to you
• Use wealth to glorify God, not just yourself

Quote:

“When we see money as God’s, we handle it differently—with purpose, peace, and power.”

---

2. Diligence and Hard Work Bring Prosperity

Proverbs 10:4 – “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.”

Financial laziness is mental, physical, and spiritual.
Avoid laziness in planning, learning, and building wealth.

Example: Oprah Winfrey built a global empire through diligence—not luck.
Biblical Application: Psalms 1:3 – “Whatever he does prospers.”

Faith + Action = Prosperity

Action Steps:

• Show up early. Learn. Network. Execute.
• Serve God in your work, not just in church.
• Work is worship when done with purpose.

---

3. Avoid Debt and Live Within Your Means

Proverbs 22:7 – “The borrower is slave to the lender.”

Debt leads to anxiety, stress, and missed opportunities.
God’s people are called to financial freedom.

Real-World Example:
Chris Hogan teaches the power of debt-free living in Everyday Millionaires. These everyday millionaires became wealthy by saving. They also budget carefully and avoid debt.

Action Steps:

• Budget with a plan, not emotion
• Buy only what you can afford
• Practice the “banana principle”: Don’t chase what’s ripe today but rotten tomorrow.

---

4. Tithing and Generosity Invite God’s Blessing

Malachi 3:10 – “Bring the whole tithe… see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven.”

Generosity invites God into your finances.

Real-World Example:
Bill Gates’ philanthropy helped eradicate diseases and feed nations. He gave to bless, and the blessing multiplied.

Action Steps:

• Tithe as an act of faith
• Give beyond money—give time, wisdom, love
• Be a blessing to others

---

5. Invest and Multiply What God Gives You

Matthew 25:14–30 – Parable of the Talents

God expects you to grow what He gives you. Don’t bury your potential.

Real-World Examples:

• Warren Buffet invests long-term with wisdom and restraint
• Ray Dalio succeeds through planning, research, and principles

Action Steps:

• Start small—just start
• Learn to invest: stocks, skills, businesses
• Multiply resources for Kingdom impact

---

6. Practice Contentment—Avoid the Love of Money

1 Timothy 6:10 – “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Wealth is a tool, not a goal.

Real-World Example:
Dave Ramsey lives and teaches contentment after rebounding from financial failure. He preaches peace over pressure.

Action Steps:

• Be content with what you have
• Avoid comparison and consumerism
• Focus on eternal rewards over earthly riches

---

🎯 How to Apply These Biblical Money Foundations Today

✅ Recognize that God owns everything
✅ Be diligent and hardworking
✅ Avoid debt and impulse purchases
✅ Tithe and give generously
✅ Invest wisely
✅ Practice contentment daily

---

Watch Full Teaching on YouTube

👇Watch this full video breakdown with real-life case studies and extra teaching only on Faith & Fortune Finance:

---

Conclusion

God’s financial principles aren’t just spiritual—they’re practical. Apply them and you’ll see peace, purpose, and prosperity flow into every area of your life.

By Babs Olugbemi

One of my concerns for leaders is their capacity to be ambidextrous. Regardless of years of experience, knowledge, and leadership capacity, the lack of a clear distinction between managing and leading on the one hand, leading and building institutions on the second layer, and ultimately focussing on sustainability is a significant threat to successful leadership change.

I have followed events and people at C-suites, coached some, and developed frameworks for leadership development. Based on the personalities and styles of the new leaders, I have confirmed my fears about leadership sustainability in most African organisations.

“Successful leaders can aptly differentiate themselves and their roles without necessarily seeing activities as performance, focussing on what is required of them with appropriate tenacity and influence.”

The challenge for leaders is how to lead for the present and future without losing sight of the stakeholders’ immediate performance expectations. Successful leaders can aptly differentiate themselves and their roles without necessarily seeing activities as performance, focussing on what is required of them with appropriate tenacity and influence.

READ ALSO: Leadership, not God responsible for Africa’s poverty

BREAKING: Justice Binta Nyako Steps Down From Nnamdi Kanu’s Trial, As He Fearlessly Scolds Her For Disobeying Supreme Court’s Judgment

Afrocentric colonialism: The new face of African oppression

Health: Genotype And Compatibility, Phenotype, Blood Groups And DNA

In my walk as a leadership coach, I have keenly observed leaders who are managing rather than leading. Managing involves ensuring that processes achieve their intended outcomes. Leaders are above managing and should focus on creating an enabling environment for innovation, inventions, and team collaboration. The primary role in leading is not to monitor process outcomes, though critical to the company’s overall objectives, but to align corporate values with the people’s aspirations to create an engaged and ownership-thinking mindset ready to take on challenges and explore opportunities. An alignment of corporate and personal goals will not only deliver the present performance expectations. Still, it will also incubate innovations to adapt to future market demands and the sustainability of the business.

Unfortunately, the capacity for ambidexterity is rare and often marked by leaders’ exposure, approach and styles, perception, and perspective of their roles in the organisation. A leader with a wrong foundation in these areas is set for failure and awaits unfavourable decisions from the board of directors. A top-level leader might manage their teams instead of leading them. Not all leaders can combine leading for the present with building institutions. However, anyone able to submit themselves to an institution-building mechanism can champion sustainability. Aside from being a leadership coach, I help leaders achieve sustainability.

Mathematically, creating an ambidextrous organisation is beyond leading. It is to lead and build an institution that focuses on sustainability in all aspects of the organisation—employee fulfilment, customer retention, strategy effectiveness, performance evaluation, stakeholder management, process improvement, and goal congruence.

In a nutshell, the role of successful leaders in ambidextrous organisations is striking a balance between exploiting current assets and capabilities to ensure short-term success and allocating enough energy and resources to exploration to ensure future viability. The two primary tasks of a top-level leader are to exploit and explore the organisation with people for now and in the future. The two seemingly contradictory aspects—exploitation and exploration—encompass different strategies and processes and have different targets and outcomes (March 1991; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013).

O’Reilly and Tushman described the two concepts as follows:

• Exploiting: Exploiting involves building on an organisation’s achievements and maximising returns on previous investments. It focuses on responding to current business demands to remain efficient and competitive within an established market niche, as well as on maintaining an existing customer base and stakeholder relationships. Examples of exploiting are activities focused on continuous improvement, benchmarking, and redesigning business processes.
• Exploring: Exploring focuses on expanding an organisation’s knowledge and capabilities, pioneering new products and services, and discovering and venturing into untapped markets.

The common area of practical bottlenecks in exploiting and exploring in organisations is a need for foundational trust and cohesion among the resources, especially the human capital, which are often treated as costs rather than assets to the organisations. Among all the factors of production, only humans can be ambidextrous with the capacity to think about changes in economic parameters and adjust their behaviours to match the time, content, and contextual requirements.

While organisations might have the resources to deploy in fighting competition, technology to obtain first-mover advantages, and production capacity to maximise output from input, none is compared with the potential of an engaged workforce.

Therefore, for leaders to be successful, they must refrain from operating in the realm of managing. They should operate in the capacity of institution builders, with the mindset of creating sustainable leadership and growth with people first and other factors of production second.

Consequently, only the leaders who prioritise their people over profits, pride, and organisational arrogance will be successful in the long term.

Jessica Fialkovich, an entrepreneur leadership network contributor, has listed three important non-financial factors that could impact business value.

In a business publication on Entrepreneur, Fialkovich revealed that, to come up with the true value of a company or business, “we also look at factors like the level of owner involvement, company goals and growth opportunities.”

She explained that, “Determining a business’ value is not all about adding up revenue and subtracting expenses. While an important piece, these hard numbers are only half the equation for computing what a company is worth. To come up with the true value, we also look at factors like the level of owner involvement, company goals and growth opportunities. When we use the complete equation, we get a comprehensive picture of a business and can better understand the story of its past, present and future.”

“Calculations may vary depending on the company, but in a healthy one, there is about a 50/50 split between the quantitative (financial) and qualitative (non-financial) sides of performance. If the business isn’t profitable, it’s more important to focus on the quantitative side and fix the numbers first. Many owners don’t want to hear that, but if they’re not hitting their numbers, it may mean the business is not working. They must fix the quantitative issues before moving to the qualitative side” she added.

The first factor is what is called:

The owner’s Goal

We’ve found significant research showing that if an owner has defined goals and plans for the future that are in line with market expectations for their company’s value, they’re going to have a much stronger exit. What is the owner’s defined goal for exiting the business — to get the most money, to take care of their employees and to ensure a legacy? You must then get to the “why” behind the goals and devise a plan of action. It almost doesn’t matter what the answers to the questions are; having achievable goals and a strategy for reaching them can increase the company’s value because it keeps the owner focused on improving the other areas of the business.

The second factor is called:

The owner’s role

The extent of the owner’s involvement is a critical indicator, but perhaps not for the reason you think. The more involved the owner is in day-to-day operations, the more central they are to the business, the less the business will be worth down the road. If the owner is the linchpin that holds everything together, what will happen to the company when they leave? Evaluating operations is more about the system and the structure of the team. Look at the organizational chart and who’s on it – are they good employees or bad employees? Examine the company’s processes and procedures and how new team members are trained and onboarded. The owner sets the vision, but it’s the team that increases company value by carrying out the vision.

The third factor is called:

Growth opportunities

Nobody wants to buy a business and keep it exactly as it is. They want to see potential for growth in the future, especially the potential for return on their investment as a buyer. Whether it’s a simple price increase or new locations, whoever buys the business is going to ask about growth opportunities. Indicators like product or service diversification in both the company and the industry it’s in give a good sense of whether the company is moving forward or standing still (and at risk of going backward). The more potential you can show, the more upside there will be for the next owner — adding up to greater value.

Introduction

Is money evil? Should Christians be rich? What does the Bible really say about wealth?
Many believers struggle with finances due to mixed messages. But Scripture provides clear wisdom about money management. In this post, discover 6 Biblical money foundations that help you enjoy wealth without guilt and handle finances God’s way. This will help you in Faith and finances. You will learn about Godly wealth principles and Christian money tips. It covers managing money God’s way as well as spiritual and financial freedom. You will also explore Biblical investing, tithing, and blessings.

Watch the full video breakdown on our Faith & Fortune Finance YouTube channel [embedded below].

___________________

1. God Owns Everything—We Are Just Stewards

Psalm 24:1 – “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it.”

God owns it all—your money, house, gifts, even your ideas.
You’re not the owner. You’re the steward.

Action Steps:

• Shift from ownership to stewardship
• Ask God how to manage what He’s entrusted to you
• Use wealth to glorify God, not just yourself

Quote:

“When we see money as God’s, we handle it differently—with purpose, peace, and power.”

---

2. Diligence and Hard Work Bring Prosperity

Proverbs 10:4 – “Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.”

Financial laziness is mental, physical, and spiritual.
Avoid laziness in planning, learning, and building wealth.

Example: Oprah Winfrey built a global empire through diligence—not luck.
Biblical Application: Psalms 1:3 – “Whatever he does prospers.”

Faith + Action = Prosperity

Action Steps:

• Show up early. Learn. Network. Execute.
• Serve God in your work, not just in church.
• Work is worship when done with purpose.

---

3. Avoid Debt and Live Within Your Means

Proverbs 22:7 – “The borrower is slave to the lender.”

Debt leads to anxiety, stress, and missed opportunities.
God’s people are called to financial freedom.

Real-World Example:
Chris Hogan teaches the power of debt-free living in Everyday Millionaires. These everyday millionaires became wealthy by saving. They also budget carefully and avoid debt.

Action Steps:

• Budget with a plan, not emotion
• Buy only what you can afford
• Practice the “banana principle”: Don’t chase what’s ripe today but rotten tomorrow.

---

4. Tithing and Generosity Invite God’s Blessing

Malachi 3:10 – “Bring the whole tithe… see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven.”

Generosity invites God into your finances.

Real-World Example:
Bill Gates’ philanthropy helped eradicate diseases and feed nations. He gave to bless, and the blessing multiplied.

Action Steps:

• Tithe as an act of faith
• Give beyond money—give time, wisdom, love
• Be a blessing to others

---

5. Invest and Multiply What God Gives You

Matthew 25:14–30 – Parable of the Talents

God expects you to grow what He gives you. Don’t bury your potential.

Real-World Examples:

• Warren Buffet invests long-term with wisdom and restraint
• Ray Dalio succeeds through planning, research, and principles

Action Steps:

• Start small—just start
• Learn to invest: stocks, skills, businesses
• Multiply resources for Kingdom impact

---

6. Practice Contentment—Avoid the Love of Money

1 Timothy 6:10 – “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Wealth is a tool, not a goal.

Real-World Example:
Dave Ramsey lives and teaches contentment after rebounding from financial failure. He preaches peace over pressure.

Action Steps:

• Be content with what you have
• Avoid comparison and consumerism
• Focus on eternal rewards over earthly riches

---

🎯 How to Apply These Biblical Money Foundations Today

✅ Recognize that God owns everything
✅ Be diligent and hardworking
✅ Avoid debt and impulse purchases
✅ Tithe and give generously
✅ Invest wisely
✅ Practice contentment daily

---

Watch Full Teaching on YouTube

👇Watch this full video breakdown with real-life case studies and extra teaching only on Faith & Fortune Finance:

---

Conclusion

God’s financial principles aren’t just spiritual—they’re practical. Apply them and you’ll see peace, purpose, and prosperity flow into every area of your life.

By Babs Olugbemi

One of my concerns for leaders is their capacity to be ambidextrous. Regardless of years of experience, knowledge, and leadership capacity, the lack of a clear distinction between managing and leading on the one hand, leading and building institutions on the second layer, and ultimately focussing on sustainability is a significant threat to successful leadership change.

I have followed events and people at C-suites, coached some, and developed frameworks for leadership development. Based on the personalities and styles of the new leaders, I have confirmed my fears about leadership sustainability in most African organisations.

“Successful leaders can aptly differentiate themselves and their roles without necessarily seeing activities as performance, focussing on what is required of them with appropriate tenacity and influence.”

The challenge for leaders is how to lead for the present and future without losing sight of the stakeholders’ immediate performance expectations. Successful leaders can aptly differentiate themselves and their roles without necessarily seeing activities as performance, focussing on what is required of them with appropriate tenacity and influence.

READ ALSO: Leadership, not God responsible for Africa’s poverty

BREAKING: Justice Binta Nyako Steps Down From Nnamdi Kanu’s Trial, As He Fearlessly Scolds Her For Disobeying Supreme Court’s Judgment

Afrocentric colonialism: The new face of African oppression

Health: Genotype And Compatibility, Phenotype, Blood Groups And DNA

In my walk as a leadership coach, I have keenly observed leaders who are managing rather than leading. Managing involves ensuring that processes achieve their intended outcomes. Leaders are above managing and should focus on creating an enabling environment for innovation, inventions, and team collaboration. The primary role in leading is not to monitor process outcomes, though critical to the company’s overall objectives, but to align corporate values with the people’s aspirations to create an engaged and ownership-thinking mindset ready to take on challenges and explore opportunities. An alignment of corporate and personal goals will not only deliver the present performance expectations. Still, it will also incubate innovations to adapt to future market demands and the sustainability of the business.

Unfortunately, the capacity for ambidexterity is rare and often marked by leaders’ exposure, approach and styles, perception, and perspective of their roles in the organisation. A leader with a wrong foundation in these areas is set for failure and awaits unfavourable decisions from the board of directors. A top-level leader might manage their teams instead of leading them. Not all leaders can combine leading for the present with building institutions. However, anyone able to submit themselves to an institution-building mechanism can champion sustainability. Aside from being a leadership coach, I help leaders achieve sustainability.

Mathematically, creating an ambidextrous organisation is beyond leading. It is to lead and build an institution that focuses on sustainability in all aspects of the organisation—employee fulfilment, customer retention, strategy effectiveness, performance evaluation, stakeholder management, process improvement, and goal congruence.

In a nutshell, the role of successful leaders in ambidextrous organisations is striking a balance between exploiting current assets and capabilities to ensure short-term success and allocating enough energy and resources to exploration to ensure future viability. The two primary tasks of a top-level leader are to exploit and explore the organisation with people for now and in the future. The two seemingly contradictory aspects—exploitation and exploration—encompass different strategies and processes and have different targets and outcomes (March 1991; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013).

O’Reilly and Tushman described the two concepts as follows:

• Exploiting: Exploiting involves building on an organisation’s achievements and maximising returns on previous investments. It focuses on responding to current business demands to remain efficient and competitive within an established market niche, as well as on maintaining an existing customer base and stakeholder relationships. Examples of exploiting are activities focused on continuous improvement, benchmarking, and redesigning business processes.
• Exploring: Exploring focuses on expanding an organisation’s knowledge and capabilities, pioneering new products and services, and discovering and venturing into untapped markets.

The common area of practical bottlenecks in exploiting and exploring in organisations is a need for foundational trust and cohesion among the resources, especially the human capital, which are often treated as costs rather than assets to the organisations. Among all the factors of production, only humans can be ambidextrous with the capacity to think about changes in economic parameters and adjust their behaviours to match the time, content, and contextual requirements.

While organisations might have the resources to deploy in fighting competition, technology to obtain first-mover advantages, and production capacity to maximise output from input, none is compared with the potential of an engaged workforce.

Therefore, for leaders to be successful, they must refrain from operating in the realm of managing. They should operate in the capacity of institution builders, with the mindset of creating sustainable leadership and growth with people first and other factors of production second.

Consequently, only the leaders who prioritise their people over profits, pride, and organisational arrogance will be successful in the long term.

Jessica Fialkovich, an entrepreneur leadership network contributor, has listed three important non-financial factors that could impact business value.

In a business publication on Entrepreneur, Fialkovich revealed that, to come up with the true value of a company or business, “we also look at factors like the level of owner involvement, company goals and growth opportunities.”

She explained that, “Determining a business’ value is not all about adding up revenue and subtracting expenses. While an important piece, these hard numbers are only half the equation for computing what a company is worth. To come up with the true value, we also look at factors like the level of owner involvement, company goals and growth opportunities. When we use the complete equation, we get a comprehensive picture of a business and can better understand the story of its past, present and future.”

“Calculations may vary depending on the company, but in a healthy one, there is about a 50/50 split between the quantitative (financial) and qualitative (non-financial) sides of performance. If the business isn’t profitable, it’s more important to focus on the quantitative side and fix the numbers first. Many owners don’t want to hear that, but if they’re not hitting their numbers, it may mean the business is not working. They must fix the quantitative issues before moving to the qualitative side” she added.

The first factor is what is called:

The owner’s Goal

We’ve found significant research showing that if an owner has defined goals and plans for the future that are in line with market expectations for their company’s value, they’re going to have a much stronger exit. What is the owner’s defined goal for exiting the business — to get the most money, to take care of their employees and to ensure a legacy? You must then get to the “why” behind the goals and devise a plan of action. It almost doesn’t matter what the answers to the questions are; having achievable goals and a strategy for reaching them can increase the company’s value because it keeps the owner focused on improving the other areas of the business.

The second factor is called:

The owner’s role

The extent of the owner’s involvement is a critical indicator, but perhaps not for the reason you think. The more involved the owner is in day-to-day operations, the more central they are to the business, the less the business will be worth down the road. If the owner is the linchpin that holds everything together, what will happen to the company when they leave? Evaluating operations is more about the system and the structure of the team. Look at the organizational chart and who’s on it – are they good employees or bad employees? Examine the company’s processes and procedures and how new team members are trained and onboarded. The owner sets the vision, but it’s the team that increases company value by carrying out the vision.

The third factor is called:

Growth opportunities

Nobody wants to buy a business and keep it exactly as it is. They want to see potential for growth in the future, especially the potential for return on their investment as a buyer. Whether it’s a simple price increase or new locations, whoever buys the business is going to ask about growth opportunities. Indicators like product or service diversification in both the company and the industry it’s in give a good sense of whether the company is moving forward or standing still (and at risk of going backward). The more potential you can show, the more upside there will be for the next owner — adding up to greater value.