Proverbs 24:27, “Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house”
The road to success is filled with a lot of ups and downs, and plenty of wins and losses. When the losses come, we know that we must learn from them so that we can win when another opportunity comes. But what about those wins? How are we to respond when we are in the midst of a winning streak?
Not too many people take time to consider how they are to respond when everything seems to be going their way. For many, they simply enjoy the period of success they are experiencing and bask in the victories. Because everything is going their way, they can’t imagine that things will go awry. So they start to upgrade their lifestyle accordingly. They upgrade their home, upgrade their clothes, upgrade their cars. Before long, the string of successes start to dwindle and they are in a slump. Soon enough, all those upgrades start to become a burden on them.
What I just described happens much too often; and when it does happen, it will typically ruin a person financially. Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with enjoying success when it comes. If you have worked hard and you are starting to see the fruit of your labor manifest itself, enjoy it! However, don’t go overboard. What oftentimes happen is that the way in which we celebrate a success tends to go beyond the level of success we reach.
This is where I believe this passage from Solomon becomes so important to keep in mind. In this verse, Solomon gives us a process that I believe can be useful to know how to enjoy the success we receive.
- Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field:
Translation: Lay the foundation
- Build your house
Translation: Build on that foundation
Let’s start with step one, laying the foundation. As you start to see the fruit of your labor manifest itself, it is very tempting to want to go out and splurge. Believe me, I have been there. However, as I stated earlier, this could end up being very damaging if you begin to encounter unexpected problems. Before you start to buy all those luxury goods, make sure that you have a solid financial foundation that can weather unexpected problems. Start off by having a rock-solid emergency savings account. A good rule of thumb is that you typically want your savings to equal between three to six months of expenses. Having an emergency savings in place will help to make sure that you aren’t in a financial pickle when something unexpected transpires. Along with having a strong emergency savings account, it is important to eliminate as much debt as possible. Excessive debt puts a person in a very difficult situation where they are limited in how much wealth they can build because they owe someone else some money. Even if you ignore the debt, it doesn’t go away; it only gets bigger. The wealth you might have been attempting to build while ignoring the debt will have to be used to pay off the debt. So, eliminating debt must be a priority before building wealth.
With the savings in place and the debt paid off, now you can safely move on to step two: building on that foundation. I can’t stress enough how much easier it is to enjoy the fruit of your labor when there is a proper foundation in place. But even with this step, there still must be discipline that is exercised. Unfortunately, it is very easy to put yourself back in a financial hole if you aren’t consistently making wise financial decisions. Remember, even a good foundation can be weakened and destroyed over time. With the purchases that you are making, make it your goal to ensure that it won’t destabilize the foundation you worked hard to lay. As I stated earlier, it’s not that you can’t enjoy nice luxurious things; but those things should not ruin everything that you’ve attempted to build. So even as you start to build on the solid foundation you laid, exercise prudence and wisdom to avoid destroying that foundation.
As you strive for success in whatever endeavor you lay before you, my hope is that you do achieve that success. But as that success comes, don’t forget the wise words of King Solomon. First, prepare your work outside and get everything ready for yourself in the field. In other words, lay that foundation. Only after laying that foundation, wisely build your house.