Dorsey Ross Show
Hello, my name is Dorsey Ross, and I am the host of the Dorsey Ross Show. I am a minister and itinerant speaker. I started the Dorsey Ross Show to interview people of faith who have stories of faith and overcoming trials and difficulties. In this podcast, you will hear stories of all kinds. Some will make you laugh, cry, and even say I can connect with that story or that person. I would love to encourage you to check out these stories of faith, encouragement, and inspiration my guests share on the show. I hope these stories give you hope, to get you through your week and your life. Please share them with your family, friends, co-workers, and anyone who needs a little touch of encouragement today.
Dorsey Ross Show
Faith & Finances: Aligning Your Money with God's Purpose
Welcome to the Dorsey Ross Show
Katie Viola Jones transforms our understanding of money management through a gospel-centered lens that challenges conventional wisdom about wealth and faith. As a certified Christian financial counselor and founder of Redeeming Your Finances, Katie shares her personal awakening - how she realized she was pursuing financial independence not just for security, but as a substitute for dependence on God.
Katie's approach differs dramatically from typical financial advice. Rather than simply teaching budgeting techniques or investment strategies, she addresses the heart issues behind financial struggles. "I realized that true biblical financial freedom comes when we let go of asking our money to do for us what only God can do - give us security, hope, and identity," Katie explains with disarming honesty.
The conversation tackles difficult questions about prosperity theology, revealing how even devoted Christians can unconsciously adopt worldly financial mindsets. Katie confesses she once treated Scripture as a validation tool for her financial ambitions rather than seeking God's actual purpose for her resources. This revelation transformed her relationship with money and developed into a ministry helping others align their finances with biblical principles.
Perhaps most compelling is Katie's perspective on generosity. She challenges listeners to move beyond comfortable tithing to sacrificial giving that feels uncomfortable, citing Jesus's praise of the widow who gave her last two coins. "Biblical generosity needs to be sacrificial. We need to give something up in order to gain more of the kingdom of God," she asserts with gentle conviction.
Whether you're struggling with debt, trapped in a paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, or financially stable but seeking greater purpose for your resources, Katie's wisdom provides a roadmap for aligning your money with your faith. Connect with her through the "Christian Money Management" Facebook group or visit redeemingyourfinances.com to discover how financial stewardship can become an authentic expression of your relationship with Christ.
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Hello everyone, thanks again for joining me on another episode of the Dorsal Show. Today we have a special guest with us. Her name is Katie Viola Jones, who embodies a passion for empowering individuals to manage their money in alignment with their faith money in alignment with their faith. As a youth pastor's wife, mom, foster mom, a graduate of Colorado Christian University and traveler, real estate investing, certified financial counselor, katie's diverse experience has shaped her understanding of the intersection between faith and finances. She is the visionary behind Redeeming your Finances an online school for believers to learn how to manage their money while using their skills that are rooted in the gospel. Katie, thank you so much for coming on the show today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hi Dorsey, thank you for having me. I'm excited to chat today and get started.
Speaker 1:Yes, definitely. I usually like to open up with a icebreaker question. Can you introduce yourself as if someone else was introducing you? Ooh.
Speaker 2:If someone else were introducing me, they my husband, would probably tell you things. Like you know, she loves her chickens, she loves cats, she loves to bake and she's really good at money and that is why she handles the money in our family. He loves telling people about my affinity for chickens. We do have um a handful of chickens here in in our backyard. It's kind of our own little tiny homestead that we have. And yeah, I don't know, for some reason that's usually one of the first things that comes up, even in conversations with friends. I don't know why, but it's always one of those things.
Speaker 1:What kind of fun fact about you that most people don't know.
Speaker 2:That most people don't know Maybe. I mean, I don't know if people don't know this or it might be an interesting fact but I am really really good at putting together jigsaw puzzles. I can typically do a 1000 piece puzzle within a day, or if it's a harder puzzle it might take me a couple days. But I found that a lot of my friends don't know this. Growing up everybody kind of knew it. But these days now in my 30s, and with my adult friends, I've talked about puzzles. I love doing them over the winter and we're having this conversation and it's freezing outside, and so I've been doing a lot of puzzles lately. That is something that not a lot of people know about me is that I love doing puzzles.
Speaker 1:Give us a little background on your story and how you got involved with what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my story starts out in my last few years of college. I was graduating, getting ready to graduate, and I started working at a property management firm which helped people rent out and manage their properties, and so I was helping other landlords to rent out their rental properties. I really loved seeing what they were doing, and so I wanted to also do that myself. So after I graduated college, my husband and I got married. A couple years after that, we bought our first rental property within a couple months of getting married, and I was on this journey to learn everything that I could about financial independence and becoming really good at managing my money and wanting to invest and become, you know, just this person who knew a lot about how to manage money and achieve financial freedom. I started blogging around this time. I wanted to learn more and teach others about what I was learning, and so I was kind of teaching about and writing about how to glorify God with our rental properties and with our finances, and after a while, I realized that I was pursuing these financial goals more than I was pursuing my relationship with Christ, which was a really big eye-opening moment for myself, and I recognized that I needed to start looking at the Bible to see what is it that God actually wants me to do with my money, versus reading the Bible to try to find my own truths about money, which is what I had been doing.
Speaker 2:And so, yeah, god opened my eyes to start to change my perspective on how I was doing everything with my finances, and around that time, I got my certification as a certified Christian financial counselor and I was coaching other individuals and families to help them learn what I was learning and to implement a gospel-centered financial plan in order to manage their money in light of that.
Speaker 2:We want to do this for the glory of God, not just so we could be financially healthy and achieve all of our own goals. We want to do this so that we're building up the kingdom and we're supporting others and we're taking good care of our families, and so it took quite a while. It was several years before I really learned these lessons that God was trying to open my eyes to, but now, here I am today and helping Christians to do the same things that I was challenged with many years ago, and so that's what I do now is I help people through the school, the online school that I have called Redeeming your Finances, and I love it. I love getting to help others have this kind of a life transforming moment for their life and for their finances for their life and for their finances.
Speaker 1:We see a lot of you know or we hear a lot of the terms Christian or financial advisor and you, even you know, said Christian counselor, financial Christian counselor. Is there a difference between the two? And if there are, what are those differences?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good question. So I am not a financial advisor, which is a little bit different. A financial advisor does need to go through different kinds of certification. There is a difference between a money coach and a financial advisor. An advisor usually helps more with investments and larger portfolios, meaning you know when you have a lot more money. A financial advisor will help you figure out where to invest your money, how to create long-term plans, how to do taxes in a way that is better for your finances and as well as generational planning so what's going to happen to your money when you pass away.
Speaker 2:And a financial coach or a financial counselor, which is what I am, helps more on the front end, I would say, and helps with things like basics, like budgeting, getting things straight with your heart, like, really, we do a lot of heart work, and so a lot of the sessions that I do is trying to get to the root of the problem of okay, why do we have a lot of debt, you know, figuring out what the issue is there that is causing someone to fall further into debt. We work on habits, and it's a lot more of that base work for getting a strong foundation to then build upon in order to hopefully eventually get to work with someone like a financial advisor, which almost it's kind of like a like the way I think of it is a two step process, like a financial coach or counselor would come first while you're still trying to figure things out and get into good habits with your money management, versus a financial advisor will kind of look more at long-term planning once you have the base kind of established. A financial advisor typically will not help with budgeting or just debt management. They might. They might have some expertise or just some tips to give you, but their strategy is more long-term planning and investments.
Speaker 1:When we look at our bank accounts or our budget and we see the money dwindling month to month or we're living paycheck to paycheck how could we view that or how could we handle that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is a really hard place to be in, living paycheck to paycheck. I was there myself and many of the clients that I work with currently are in that paycheck to paycheck cycle. I can walk you through an example of the clients that I work with currently are in that paycheck to paycheck cycle. I can walk you through an example of a client that I'm helping right now in the midst of what it looks like to then get her and her family out of this paycheck to paycheck cycle. We'll call her Sarah just for the name, for the sake of the example and her privacy. But Sarah, you know, comes to me, tells me you know, here, this is the, these are the jobs that the example and her privacy. But Sarah comes to me, tells me these are the jobs that my husband and I have.
Speaker 2:We make a decent amount of money, but we're still in this place of not being able to save money. We're not able to pay off our debt quickly. We're really just using all of our paycheck every single month. This causes lots of stress. It causes a lot of anxiety when the end of the month comes around and they're like do we have enough money to continue to pay for our groceries, or have we used it all? So one of the first things that we do when we get on that initial coaching call is to start to understand what their patterns are with their finances. Where is all the money going in the first place? So we go through a process called money tracking and we look at the last few months of their bank statements and credit cards and everything to see exactly where their money has been going. So we can start to develop a pattern to see exactly on average how much are you spending on groceries or eating out or gas or entertainment? Once we have this information, we can actually start to put a plan together to reorganize and reprioritize where the money is going, and that way we can start setting goals for saving or paying off debt.
Speaker 2:Whatever that financial goal is that you are working towards. Maybe even just simply giving more to your church is a financial goal. These are all things that we put into place in order to then reprioritize where our money is going so we can achieve those. It's all through prayer, working with God, to figure out what those goals are, what they should be. We want to glorify and honor Him above all, because financial goals are great, but they're not more important than the goal of just glorifying God with our finances.
Speaker 2:First and foremost, we set goals from a more biblical standpoint, while also recognizing that paying off debt is a way that we can honor God with our finances, you know, freeing up that money to do something different with. So that's what the initial part, like the initial program, would kind of look like if someone is in a paycheck to paycheck cycle. But first and foremost, it's just recognizing that you need help, like the two words that Help me are some of the most powerful words that somebody can use in any area of life, but especially finances, and being vulnerable enough to open up such a sensitive area of their life in order to get help. That's a big step, and so that's the first step is saying I need help and then finding someone and then going through these steps of understanding where our money's going so we can do better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we see and hear a lot of people pastors, faith-based speakers and whatnot talk about prosperity, gospel, gospel. They write about books, about you know, having more money, being able to be better financially wealthy, better off financially as as christians. How does that, how does that work? And I'm not saying how does it work, but how do you view that and you, should, we all be better off wealthy? I mean, is it bad to be, you know, not to be as wealthy as everybody else? I guess is what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good question. In the beginning, when I was going through this process of trying to learn everything I could about money management, I really, really believed that God wanted all of us, as believers, to achieve financial independence, which is basically to have enough money either set aside in our savings or investments, or bringing enough money in passively, month to month, through our investments, in order to never have to work again. I was totally under this spell from the enemy telling me that this is what believers needed to strive for, and so I worked really hard again to look at the Bible and see and find my own truth in it, versus asking God what do you want me to do with my money? And so I don't think there's a right or wrong answer whether or not it's holier to have money or holier to not have money and live in poverty. I think God calls people to both areas, because you think of someone like Mother Teresa. She started out pretty wealthy in life but then gave up everything in order to then surrender her life to working on mission. That was wonderful and something that she was called to.
Speaker 2:However, we also need people who have money in order to help fund these kinds of missions. You think of some of the wealthy women that helped fund Jesus's ministry when he was here on earth. Joanna was one of them, and that ministry, of course, would have survived through other people, but Jesus needed other wealthy people to help the mission continue to run. Same thing today we need money in order to keep our churches afloat and pastors paid and the lights on and ministries being able to reach people. So we do need finances in general.
Speaker 2:But as far as the prosperity gospel goes, I think it's interesting to know that one thing that I was woken up to was the fact that I had been falling for the prosperity gospel myself in a little way, and it's not to say that I was trying to become just super wealthy, to have a mansion and a private jet and really nice fancy clothes. I was really just striving to live really comfortably. I just wanted to be set. I wanted to be financially set to not have to worry about money anymore. I wanted to have enough to do all the things that I really enjoyed in life, and I really wanted this sense of freedom by having enough money to do all these things and never have to work for money again.
Speaker 2:And what I realized was that this was a form of the prosperity gospel that I was really falling for was I wanted God to be able to give me all these things that I ever wanted, and so I took the verses from the Bible way out of context, saying, oh, god's going to give me everything that I've ever dreamed or desired.
Speaker 2:I realized that I made it all about myself, I totally pushed God out of the conversation, and so this is a form of the prosperity gospel that unfortunately, many of us do fall for, because we treat God like a vending machine, thinking like, oh, if I pray enough, or if I'm faithful enough, or if I do X, y and Z, god will give me everything I've ever desired, which is having a really nice, comfortable house and having a really well-stocked fridge and having really nice clothes and a good car and just a comfortable, happy life. And unfortunately, many of us know this, but it's a hard reality when we have to kind of wake up to it sometimes is that that's not what we're promised? We're not promised that in the Bible at all. In fact, we're promised a tough life when we follow Jesus and when we devote our lives to him.
Speaker 2:I had to give that up. I had to give up this ideal version of my life in order to follow Christ. And that's when I realized that true biblical financial freedom comes when we let go of asking our money to do for us what only God can do, which is to give us security, which is to give us hope, which is to give us an identity. Our money can't do that for us, and if we keep asking our money to do that, we keep chasing it in this way. That's when we're falling for a version of the prosperity gospel.
Speaker 1:How did your financial learning shape your faith perspective?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was chasing money and wanting to have enough of it in order to feel comfortable, and so I really pushed God out of all of my financial decisions. When I was pursuing financial independence, I realized what I was really trying to do was become independent from God himself. I think the better version of our finances is being financially dependent, and it's not like in a worldly sense, but just simply like being dependent on Christ for our daily bread and asking him to allow us to see that what he gives us is, and asking him to give us enough, but realizing like God already provides everything for us. We just need to wake up and see that we have everything we need through Christ. But a lot of times what I realized was that my worldly perspective of finances was getting in the way of seeing the mysterious biblical way that money works. X plus X usually equals Y in the world, but X plus X might equal something completely different in God's view because of the way that he shows up in these ways that only God can. And so I have seen God work in really powerful ways and my faith has just really grown.
Speaker 2:When things don't seem like they're going to work out on paper, I put my budget together and I'm like I don't know how we're going to make it through this month. And then God shows up in crazy ways, like by providing through other people. And it's not always in exact monetary ways, but if we are, you know, in the early years, when we were kind of struggling with just our grocery budget, god would show up in ways of like people would invite us over to their houses in order to provide a meal for us and it wasn't that we ever shared with them like, oh, we're really struggling. We don't know if we're going to be able to buy groceries the rest of this month. It was just like people from our church just were like inviting us over, and it was just so clearly God was showing up and having this mercy on us to feed us, just simply feed us. And so my faith has definitely grown in just knowing that God is good, he is faithful and he will remain true to the things that he has promised to us.
Speaker 1:Amen. How can worldly, or does worldly, financial wisdom distance us from spiritual growth?
Speaker 2:How does it distance us from spiritual growth?
Speaker 1:Does it?
Speaker 2:I think it can. I don't think it has to if we're careful, because what we will notice is that a lot of like the quote unquote worldly wisdom for our finances overlaps with a lot of the biblical principles that we see about money, Having a budget, paying off debt, saving for the future. These are all things that overlapped in both of these areas. Where we can go astray from just pursuing our finances like excellent money management from a biblical perspective versus a worldly one is when we make our financial goals the end all be all Like. The most important thing that I am trying to achieve right now is your financial goal versus you know, asking God day by day what would you have me do with my money?
Speaker 2:Putting together a plan to pay off debt is beautiful and wonderful, and I help all my clients do that if they have debt. But there might be times where God is asking you that month not to pay extra towards your debt but rather to use that money to give to your church or to do something else with. We need to be in tune with Christ daily to hear from him what he might have us do with our money. That might not always align with worldly wisdom, so they correspond well together. However, we can be led astray if we let just the worldly side of things, the practical side, right, Just the yeah, it's really good to just pay off debt and save money, but if we let that cloud our vision for what God might be having for us, then that's when it can lead us astray from our faith.
Speaker 1:How do you take financial stewardship to children of faith?
Speaker 2:I get that question a lot because I mean me, I'm a mother, we have a baby, and then I have some foster children as well, and so we ask this question a lot too, like how can we teach our children good biblical money principles?
Speaker 2:And what I realized is that, whether you, as a parent, are actually sitting down to teach your kids about money or not, you are teaching your kids about money because they will start to learn from the way that you interact and the way that you talk about money.
Speaker 2:All of these little instances that they are picking up on are teaching them about money, and so the way that you treat something like payday will impact how your kids view and use money in the future, and so we have to be very intentional about the way that we talk about our money, the way that we use our money, the way that we give to others, the way that we budget. We have to be intentional about this so that way we can model to our children how to glorify God with our finances. So there's always a time and a place to have a conversation, but before you ever sit down and have these conversations, just think about the way that you might be teaching your kids about money before you actually even talk to them about it, because each interaction and action that we have with our money will teach them something.
Speaker 1:We kind of mentioned this already when we spoke before. But what?
Speaker 2:does it mean to glorify God with our finances, taking it day by day and recognizing that every dollar we spend can be spent on our kingdom, building up me, katie's kingdom, or it can go towards building up the kingdom of God.
Speaker 2:And now, that's not to say that if you were to set aside money to save for a house in the future or a new car or whatever else you are pursuing, it's not to say that that isn't godly, because actually the Proverbs 31 woman is actually a really great example of how to manage your money, because she took really good care of her family.
Speaker 2:You know we read things like she clothed her family in the finest linens and she made sure that the oil and the lamp never ran out, like she was diligent about keeping things going in her household. So that's glorifying and honoring to the Lord. But again, if we prioritize these comforts in life over giving and building the kingdom of God through other avenues, then we're missing out on a whole other aspect of our finances. So, yes, we need to prioritize our families and our household, but also, just like the Proverbs 31 woman did, she provided for her community and sought to fill the holes where there were needs within the individuals around them, and so just keeping your eyes open to where God might be tugging at your heartstrings to fill needs, you know what is it that God is placing on your heart to do so, just asking him day by day where he would want you to spend those dollars.
Speaker 1:Why is it important to think about what we do with our money beyond tithing?
Speaker 2:A lot of individuals think that being a good steward starts and ends with tithing. And yes, tithing is great. It isn't necessary in order to gain salvation. I do believe that, as Christians, there is still a place for tithing. But tithing is really interesting because I actually believe that if we are truly gospel-centered, we will not stop at tithing.
Speaker 2:And tithing simply just means giving 10% of your income. And so, first and foremost, just asking are you even giving 10% of your income to your local church If you're not make the goal, first and foremost, to reach that and to get that? But if you already are tithing, if you already are giving 10% of your income to the church, start to stretch yourself to a place where it feels really uncomfortable. If you are giving 10% and it's not feeling like a sacrifice to you, where you're literally having to ask yourself what do I need to give up in order to give more to someone else in need?
Speaker 2:I would encourage and challenge individuals to get to that place, to feel a little bit uncomfortable and then to allow God to show up in ways that only he can when we give more than we think makes financial sense the example of the widow in the temple giving the two coins, when there were the Pharisees who gave like tons and tons of money. You know, jesus saw this woman who was giving just a little amount as being more generous than these Pharisees because she was giving more sacrificially. She gave like everything that she had, versus these Pharisees who were giving large amounts, but maybe it was barely making a dent into the amount of wealth that they actually had. And so Jesus, I think right, there is challenging us to give more to a place where this is it, this is all I have, God, here is everything. I'm dedicating it all to you because biblical generosity really needs to be sacrificial. We need to give something up in order to gain more of the kingdom of God.
Speaker 1:This last question that I have kind of goes back to what we discussed earlier when we mentioned the prosperity gospel. And the last question I have is is it okay to be rich as a Christian?
Speaker 2:I think it is okay to be rich. I mean plain and simple. I don't think that a Christian needs to be poor or rich. I think we can be in both camps and glorifying God. But at the same time, I think somebody who is poor could still be worshiping money. And what that looks like is if you don't have a lot of money and every day you wake up and you're thinking about how to get more money, how to just make more, earn more, do more so that way money can come in and you're just pining after it day after day. That is someone who worships money.
Speaker 2:Now a wealthy person could also fall into that camp. They're wanting more. They're enslaved to the system of their investments and their job. This is also someone who could be loving their money. But at the same time, you can have someone in both of those areas who is strong and committed follower of Jesus Christ. Someone who's wealthy might be looking for new ways to participate in the mission of the gospel being reached to everybody, and so that is just as wonderful and honoring to God as someone who has chosen to live a life of poverty but still committed to Christ. And so it really comes down to our heart and where our heart is at versus how much is in our wallet.
Speaker 1:And I think a lot of people probably have a different definition for themselves of what rich is and what that looks like.
Speaker 2:That is so true because us living in America, we are some of the wealthiest people in the world, even if, on a scale in the United States, we might be on the lower end Compared to the rest of the world. We are living like kings and queens, and so it's all about perspective too. That is such a great point that you bring up that we need to recognize that the grass isn't always greener on the other side, right where we're at, we could be wonderful, and it really depends on how we're spending all of our money every day, because it doesn't really matter how much you're bringing in. It matters more about how much is going out and how much you're spending and where you're spending those dollars, and so we need to be very intentional about every dollar and how it's deployed.
Speaker 1:How can people connect with you and look into connecting with you and your school that you have?
Speaker 2:Yeah, great question. So I'd love to invite people first to the free Facebook group that I run. It's called Christian Money Management, very simple. You can find us there. We'd love to connect with you in that group. But if anyone is looking for deeper help spiritually and financially, you can check out my financial school. It's all online. It's called redeeming your finances at redeemingyourfinancescom. I'd love to connect with people, jump on a call and see if there is some way that I can help them. We'll explore where you're at, where God is calling you, and then if I can help bridge that gap between those two places.
Speaker 1:And I always like to ask my guests to give my listeners a word of you know, wisdom or word of knowledge, just to encourage them with you know, with their like. Today we're talking about finances, with their finances.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my word of wisdom would be no matter where you're at right now with your finances, whether you have very little and you're in lots of debt, or whether you feel like you have a lot but you're still struggling with just managing your money day to day, do not listen to what the enemy wants you to believe, which is that you are the only Christian who is struggling with this. Believer, you are not alone in your financial struggle. You are not the only one who has battled this, and you have a good good God who sees you and who has walked before you and has already defeated the battle that you are on with your finances. The first step again is recognizing that you need help and getting and seeking out that help, and so I would just encourage you to just reach out a hand to someone to help you out of this place. Let God pull you out of the pit that you feel like you are in.
Speaker 1:Amen. Well, Katie, thank you so much for coming on the show today. We greatly appreciate having you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, dorsey. Thank you for having me, and I just pray that this conversation blesses someone, amen.
Speaker 1:Well, guys and girls, thank you so much for coming on and for listening. Please go and check out Katie's information on her Facebook page and go and check out my website as well, at wwwdorseyroeltshowcom, and give it a like, give it a listen, give it a review and until next time, god bless, bye-bye.
