Stewardship

APAD DAY 44

by Daniel Owino Ogweno
04/05/17
Not For Sale
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There are three types of fraudsters.

• I am borrowing, I will pay you back

There are people who borrow with an intention of paying back but once they get the money, paying back becomes a problem. They will not pay, not because they are unable but because it pains them to release the money. They would prioritise their own things and constantly postpone paying back what they borrowed. The longer it takes, the more difficult it will be for the person to pay back what he borrowed. At the end, he qualifies to be a fraudster.

• Robbery without violence

There are people who will tell you that they are borrowing from you when they know in their heart that they don’t intend to pay back. I have personally had experience of some people coming to ‘borrow’ from me and I get to know for sure in my heart—whether by intuition or discernment—that they will not pay me back.

Because the Bible exhorts us not to refuse to lend to the person who wants to borrow from us (Lk. 6:30), I have in a number of occasions accepted to ‘lend’ out money when I knew I wouldn’t get it back. This is where it is important to remember not to lend what you can afford to lose. This is not to say that the loss may not be a true sacrifice. I remember at one time I lent out money and because of that, I couldn’t pay the rent. The person had an urgent matter and I felt sorry for him. He returned part of the money and kept the rest although he had promised to return everything in less than a week’s time.

There are people that if you don’t lend to, they will continue coming back and pleading. If you lend them, they will not pay you back but will let you have your peace because they will be ashamed to come back knowing that they haven’t paid back what they ‘borrowed’ earlier.

• Paying for a service which will not be delivered

I guess everybody gets an opportunity and pressure to prove who he actually is. You may not prove whether somebody is a thief or not until you give him an opportunity when he also has the pressure to steal. If the person doesn’t steal despite the pressure and the opportunity, then the person is confirmed not a thief.

You may not know that a service for which you are paying will not be delivered. As a self-publishing author, I had to pay publishers to publish my books. As I indicated above, I have had experiences with publishers I paid money to publish my books but they never did so. To make the matters worse, these are supposed Christian publishers.

I also had an experience where I opened my hand for a friend who needed to take a course. He told me that he was going to be given a specialized training and the college guaranteed him a job upon finishing the training. I discerned and was completely certain that the college wouldn’t give him any job. The promise of a job was just but a scheme to get many people registered in the course.

It was expensive, especially because I also had other pressing matters to spend money on. I told him that the college was lying to them, but I gave him the money to attend the course all the same. Sometimes it is better to lose money than lose peace, for if you lose peace, you will also lose sleep. After completing the course, he went without a job for many years. If I didn’t sponsor him, it would have been difficult coping with an incessant lamentation: If only you sponsored me for the course, I would be having a job. There was completely no way of proving to him that he wasn’t going to get a job after the course.