4 Overlooked Keys to Financial Freedom

Our family business manages a couple of warehouses. We all come and go on our own schedules, so everybody carries a key. I hadn’t been out to one particular building in a while, and while I was gone, a fresh batch of keys got cut and handed to the team. I had a key in my pocket, drove over, and stood at the lock trying to turn a key that wouldn’t work. Apparently the key was cut wrong, off by some fraction too small to see, but just enough to keep the pins from lining up.

I didn’t have the wrong key. I had the right key, but it was cut wrong.

My key experience stuck with me for a while. I kept thinking about a key that was mostly right, and how a mostly right key doesn’t work. Every cut has to be exact — all of them — or none of the others matter. Ninety percent correct still doesn’t turn a lock.

Financial freedom, I’ve come to believe, works the same way. Most of us treat it like a budgeting problem, or an investing problem — get the numbers right and the door to freedom opens. But it has more moving parts than that. There are four principles to financial freedom that work like four cuts in a key, fit for the pins. All four have to be working together, or a person can’t turn the lock.

I want to spend the next few weeks walking through what I’ve learned about each one.

The first cut isn’t about your budget, your income, or your debt. It’s about what you worry about — and whether you’ve ever noticed that worry runs on a kind of math.

The Addition Problem

Let me explain by pointing to the passage that holds this insight.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33, ESV).

I can imagine what you might be thinking. You’ve heard it before - seek the Kingdom of God first. It sounds a little cliche. But make no mistake — this is a direct answer to a financial issue.

In Matthew 6, Jesus was teaching on financial anxiety, specifically having enough food and clothing. He presents what appears to be a math problem:

“And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:27, ESV).

Financial worry, boiled down, is just one question: “Will I have enough?” And that question lies at the heart of our worry about money. Jesus asks whether worry can produce anything. Anything at all? Can your anxiety add a single hour to your life? His implied answer is no. Worry doesn’t just fail to help. By its very nature, it cannot add.

I noticed that the concept of “adding” shows up again when Jesus gives the solution to anxiety. Look at verse 33 one more time. When you “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness . . . all these things will be added to you.” The very things that consume our thoughts — food, clothing, provision — are what Jesus says get added.

Worry can add nothing. Seeking the Kingdom of God actually adds.

So there is a solution that actually works. But the math isn’t what most people assume.

Deepening the Problem

Food and clothing aren’t small concerns. They’re not luxuries or vanity — they’re the basic stuff of staying alive. That’s exactly why we worry about them. Most people do not stay up at night fretting over whether they can afford a boat. We can live without a boat - although some would probably argue with me about that. But if we don’t have food and clothing, we might not survive the month. So Jesus knows these things matter. But He sets out to show you how absurd it actually is to think worry can secure them.

If you are an avid Bible reader, you might have noticed the phrase translated “span of life” in verse 27 is translated differently in some versions. It has puzzled translators for centuries. The original word can mean your lifespan, but it can also refer to your physical height. That’s why the King James version, for example, renders this verse as adding “one cubit unto his stature” instead of an hour to your life. Either the message is worry can’t make you taller, or worry can’t make you live longer.

Verse 25 gives us a context clue. Because Jesus just finished saying life is worth more than food, and the body worth more than clothing, I think the closer translation is worry can’t add to your lifespan.

But the takeaway is found in what both readings have in common: neither your height nor your lifespan comes from your own effort. You didn’t calculate your way to being alive today, and you didn’t think your way to your current height. God handles both, without your help. Without your worry.

I think you will agree that handling how tall you are or how long you live is a bigger deal, in the grand scheme of things, than a meal and an outfit. So if worry can’t produce the greater thing — your very life — what makes you think it can touch the lesser thing? Your bank account was never going to be the exception.

But if worry is disqualified completely, how does the solution work?

New Math

Let’s do the math. In fact, let’s call this “new math.” Because seeking the Kingdom of God first is not merely a better technique for producing what worry never could. It’s not a smarter version of the same math. It’s a completely different math, because it solves for something else entirely.

Look again at what Jesus lists just before this. 

“What shall we eat?” “What shall we drink?” “What shall we wear?” (v.31). 

Three separate anxieties. And at first it might appear that Jesus is suggesting those three separate calculations be reduced to only one. But in fact, He tells you to stop running that math altogether. Seek only one thing: the Kingdom of God.

Because when you seek the one thing, those other three things get added. Food, drink, and clothing were never meant to be the focus of your life. They were always meant to be the byproduct of a different pursuit.

The solution for financial anxiety is to solve for the highest pursuit of all. It’s a reordering of priorities. Not three things reduced to one concern, but three things resolved as a consequence of the one pursuit that was supposed to come first all along.

So here’s the question: are you still trying to calculate provision by worrying?

The Sum of It

Seeking the Kingdom first is a nice idea. But what does that look like in day to day life? When you lie awake running numbers, is the Kingdom of God the thing you’re pursuing, or is it food, drink, clothing, and everything money represents — the very things Jesus said were never supposed to be the target?

It’s easy to nod along with verse 33 and still spend your mental energy trying to calculate your way to security instead of simply seeking Him. But when your focus is on humble obedience to God and seeking the Kingdom of God first, you’ll find that the math works. All you need will be added to you.

This is the first cut of the key. There are three more, and each one works the same way — a principle easy to overlook, but one that has to be exactly right, or the lock still won’t turn. Get this one wrong, and you’ll never experience true financial freedom.

Cut this one right — seek the Kingdom first. The door was never going to open by worrying anyway.