Retirement Tips

Retirement Investing - Protecting Your Investments - What The Bible Says

November 12th, 2006 by Papabear

Today is Sunday, so let’s take a little time to talk about a different kind of strategy for retirement investing. This post may seem like it’s just for Christians. Maybe it is. But the principle of doing all you can to protect your retirement investments applies for everyone.

Regardless of where you are investing and what type of retirement savings plan you have, you need to take steps to protect those investments. This is especially important as we get older. We could always write off a bad investment and start over when we were young. It wasn’t a lot of fun to see an investment we had high hopes for go down the drain, but sometimes it happens. When we’re older though, we know we have to be very careful where our money is invested, to try to minimize risk.

Christians have an advantage, however, when it comes to investments or at least to peace of mind. The Bible says:

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. John 10:10

This post is too short to get into involved in a debate on whether God really wants His children to prosper financially as well as spiritually. I think he does. Maybe we’ll look at that another time. For now, most Christians accept that the Devil does not want Christians to prosper. We can then can look at what the Bible says about protecting ourselves from the thief and how to stop him from stealing from us.

The Bible compares investing to planting a seed. For example:

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Gen. 8:22

When a farmer plants a crop, he does not just go away and leave the crop unprotected until it is time for harvest. He watches his crop to make sure it gets adequate nutrients and enough water. If insects attack the crop, he fights back before they can devourer the crop. For Christians, the Bible says:

And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, So that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground, nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field, says the Lord of hosts. Malachi 3:11

The same principle applies here to protecting our financial crops. Of course, God is our ultimate source – not a special set of financial investments we have made. If all our investments were wiped out, God could find another way to supply our needs.

Bet let’s start with what we know best – the investments we have been involved in. If you’re a Christian, you can accept and appropriate God’s protection on your crop (based on the promise in Malachi) and pray that the devourer (Satan) stays away from your crop (your investments).

I know this may be a little radical for some of you Christians out there. But we are also told:
Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. Ps. 103:2

The promise in Malachi 3:11 is a tremendous benefit, if we have the faith to receive it. Let’s be bold enough to acknowledge that we have been given this promise and to accept it.

For you non-Christians and skeptics out there who are reading this, you probably won’t think today’s post fits in the usual practical advice on retirement investing and retirement savings accounts you see on this blog. Feel free to post a comment or to just ignore today’s post. It’s not really for you. But for the Christians out there, this is one of most practical pieces of advice you’re likely to read on retirement investing.

Let us remember to “forget not His benefits”.