Out-of-control spending almost ruined their marriage

When her frustration hit the tipping point, Angie Cabler threw the checkbook across the room at husband Jason.

“I will no longer pay the bills,” she snapped, on a 700 Club video. “You will take care of it.”

From thoughtlessly spending to cutting up 17 credit cards, Angie chartered a course with Jason towards financial freedom, which brought them fewer worries about money, and greater peace and harmony in their marriage.

As a dentist concerned with running his practice, Jason abdicated household financial management to Angie. Debt stressed him out, so Angie balanced the checkbook.

For the first seven years of their marriage, the Christian couple never established a plan or goals for their finances.

As a result, their spending habits became unsustainable.

“I just liked to spend,” Angie admits.

As it always does, financial chaos spawned marital strife.

“When we fought, we fought about money,” she adds. “I think if we would have had open communication in the beginning, our first seven years of marriage would not have been so hard.”

But with the breaking point came a breakthrough. Angie threw the checkbook at Jason and renounced any further bookkeeping. Jason took over the expenditure tallying.

Most importantly, the Cablers enrolled in a financial education class at church where they learned the principles of everything from stewardship to generosity. They committed to tithing, eliminating frivolous spending, and setting aside a percentage of their income for a rainy day.

At the last class, Angie spontaneously offered to cut up their credit cards – all 17 of them.

“A lot of them were department stores, jewelry stores, or American Express, Visa, those kinds” of credit cards, Angie details.

In cutting the cards up, she halted… Read the rest: Out-of-control spending almost ruined their marriage.

Uganda pastor, former Muslim, killed by family for leaving Islam

Six years after Bashir Sengendo converted to Christianity from Islam, his Muslim family beat him and cut him so severely that he died 12 days later.

Sengendo, 35, of Namutumba, Western Uganda, left a family of four when he passed away in the hospital on Jan. 25th after succumbing to wounds inflicted by his own brother and uncle.

“The family needs a lot of financial, moral and psychological support,” a Kiboga area pastor told Morning Star news, which tracks persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Africa.

Bashir Sengendo was raised a Muslim and trained to become a mosque leader. But he converted to Christ after he spoke with a former Muslim. Sengendo left his native town and studied at a Uganda Bible college before serving as a pastor in Kiboga for six years.

His immediate family sent messages to him to return home and take care of the farmland that was his portion of the inheritance. Sengendo was reluctant to return because he wanted to continue fulfilling his call to Kiboga.

After six years, Sengendo acceded to his family’s pleas to return home. He had no idea what awaited him.

He arrived Jan. 12th. If he thought the family would receive him warmly, he was badly mistaken. The family was openly hostile.

He was shocked by their cold reception and slept without food.

Early the next morning, his brother and uncle fell on him with violence.

“They beat me badly. They cut me with an object in the head, back and hand,” Sengendo told Morning Star News following the attack, while he hovered between life and death in the hospital. Read the rest: Persecution of Christians around the world.