Putting the Lord at the head of your debt freedom program requires that you clear several important hurdles so that you get off to a good start. Lay the following foundation and the rest of it will flow easily.

1) Acknowledge that indebtedness represents a problem with your finances. This is not so easy because our society eagerly embraces credit. We are used to it and many of us have come to depend on it. Therefore, our flesh will resist admitting that living by credit is a problem. But Believers have been instructed to come out of the world and to put aside its ways. We must learn to live without something that God calls a curse and come back to living by faith in the area of our finances. Only after you have come to admit that your debt is a problem can you begin to set up the means for correction.

2) In setting up the means for correction, you need to ask God for a Spirit of Repentance so you can come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit that the pursuit of indebtedness, except in family emergency, is not desirable. If you can see that credit represents the flesh’s alternative to God’s provision, you will eventually come to the point where you long to be out of debt once and for all and you will cry out to God for His deliverance. God hears the cries of His people and if you can come to this conviction on a spiritual level, the outlook for success, in God’s timing, is virtually assured.

3) When you have come under conviction, then you can repent for your sin and ask God for His leading to set up the details of a program to get out of debt. What changes do you need to make in the administration of the finances God provides? What do you need to learn and to change to become a good steward? By repenting you declare before God that you are prepared to live another way, without debt and on a cash basis, if He will help you and show you the way.

4) Understand that Jesus won the victory for you over indebtedness at the cross of Calvary. Go back and study Galatians, Chapter 3 and re-verify for yourself that for those who will live by faith, the blessings of Abraham are again available. Those blessings include financial prosperity and the ability to acquire wealth through faith instead of by indebtedness. By faith you can apprehend the victory of Christ and claim victory over your own circumstances. Ask God to stir up your faith for the eventual end of your indebtedness.

5) Once you have made God the head of your debt freedom program, make an irrevocable decision to change your lifestyle and live without debt. Irrevocable means you are not going back. Irrevocable means that you deprive yourself of the means of acquiring new debt by removing your credit cards to a safe place or even destroying them if necessary. Irrevocable means you will purpose to wait on God’s provision instead of resorting to credit.