I have never kept a budget and it shows. Money leaves faster than it arrives and I genuinely do not know where it goes. Where do I even start?

“Be thou diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy herds. For riches are not for ever: and doth the crown endure to every generation?”

Proverbs collects the practical wisdom Israel taught its young, and this saying comes from an agricultural world where a man's flocks were his entire economy. The instruction is not about spirituality in the abstract; it is about paying attention to what you actually own, because wealth is not self sustaining and quietly drains away from anyone who refuses to look at it. Attention is the first act of care.

“Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.”

Paul is organising a relief collection for famine struck believers in Jerusalem, and rather than asking for one dramatic gift he tells the Corinthians to set money aside every week, proportioned to what they had earned. It is an unglamorous instruction about rhythm and planning. Even the most generous impulse in Paul's churches ran on something ordinary: deciding in advance what happens to the money before it arrives.