Article May 8, 2000 Issue

WHO MANAGES YOUR MONEY?

Leora Garner

As an investment advisor, I have had a lot of experience in managing money. However, it would be inaccurate for me to take credit for the good decisions I have made over the years. I rely on God to guide me; I trust the spiritual intuition we all have that comes from God. The Bible refers to it as a "still small voice" that leads us in the right path (see I Kings 19:9–12).

When I was a young girl, my father began to teach me about the stock market. He showed me how to read annual reports and how to get the information necessary to make informed decisions. But he always emphasized that after I had digested the information, I was to pray about it and listen to that still small voice before making any move. That advice has proven indispensable to me over the years.

After my father passed on, I was not sure I could actually invest on my own. He had always been enormously successful in picking stocks, but even though he had taught my mother and me to do so, we still felt unsure on our own. One day, shortly after his passing, Mother called to say that it had come to her very strongly that we needed to sell a particular stock, though she could not tell me why. We sold it. Two weeks later it was revealed that the head of the company had been arrested for fraud. The stock plummeted. For me, the lesson came not in preventing a monetary loss, but in proving the importance of listening to and following God's direction. It reminds me of these words from Science and Health: "The effects of Christian Science are not so much seen as felt. It is the 'still, small voice' of Truth uttering itself. We are either turning away from this utterance, or we are listening to it and going up higher" (p. 323).

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