If you’re an Australian staring at your latest electricity bill, wondering how you’ll stretch the grocery money until payday, or lying awake at night calculating whether the next mortgage repayment or rent increase will finally break the budget, then you need to keep reading. If the headlines about rising rents, food prices jumping and electricity costs soaring have left you feeling trapped in a cycle of impossible life choices, this message is for you.
Australian Bureau of Statistics data confirms what every household already feels in their wallet. In the year to the December 2025 quarter, living costs rose for every type of household—between 2.3 per cent for employee households and a punishing 4.2 per cent for those relying on government payments. Housing and food, the two expenses you cannot escape, led the charge. Electricity prices rose sharply after state rebates ended. Rents climbed 3.9 per cent. Meat rose 4.4 per cent. Fruit and vegetables increased 4 per cent after Queensland’s extreme weather. Even recreation jumped as much as 24.4 per cent for international trips. Then, just recently, the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 3.85 per cent in February 2026, then to 4.1 per cent in March. By the time you read this article, who knows how much higher it will be.
Worry begins the moment we forget who really owns it all.
The numbers are real. The pressure is relentless. Yet there is a better, worry-free way through this crisis—one that does not depend on another rate cut, a pay rise or an unexpected gift. It depends on a single, liberating truth that has sustained people through every economic storm in history.
Think of biblical figure Job. One day he was a wealthy landowner with 7000 sheep, 3000 camels, 1000 oxen and 500 donkeys. The next day he owned nothing. His entire livelihood vanished in moments. Most of us would have crumbled. But Job looked at the ruins and said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21). How was this possible? Because Job never considered any of it his own. He understood he was simply the manager, not the owner. What he “lost” was never his to begin with.
That same truth applies to every person facing today’s cost-of-living squeeze. God’s Word is crystal clear: “For we brought nothing into this world, and we can carry nothing out” (1 Timothy 6:7). Nothing. Not your three-bedroom home in suburban Sydney, not your investment property, not your superannuation balance. You entered the world with empty hands; you will leave the same way. Everything you touch is on loan.
This is not a depressing thought—it is the most freeing realisation you will ever have. When you stop pretending you are the owner, the pressure to protect, increase and worry about “your” possessions evaporates. You step out of the exhausting role of owner and back into the lighter, God-designed role of manager. A manager has restrictions, yes—but also total security. The owner (God) carries the ultimate responsibility. Your job is simply to manage what has been entrusted to you.
The moment we forget this and start acting like owners, worry floods in. We obsess over the next electricity bill as it rises. We lie awake calculating whether the 3.9 per cent rent increase will force us to skip food. We check the super statement and feel sick at every dip. We scan grocery prices and wonder how the family will eat. All of this anxiety is unnecessary once you remember the relationship: God is the owner; you are the manager. His problem is to provide; your privilege is to trust.
Jesus was emphatic on this point. In Matthew 6 He repeats the command three times in quick succession: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or drink” (v25); “Do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’” (v31); and “Do not be anxious about tomorrow” (v34). He points to the lilies of the field that neither labour nor spin yet are clothed more beautifully than King Solomon. If God dresses the grass of the paddock, how much more will He care for the family in a rental unit in Melbourne or the pensioner in Brisbane?
The cost-of-living crisis makes Jesus’ words even more relevant. Those on government payments—the very households the ABS shows facing the steepest 4.2 per cent rise—are often the ones society writes off as “dependent”. Yet in God’s economy, dependence is not weakness; it is the doorway to freedom. When you place your faith in God as your partner at all times and under all circumstances, you discover the freedom of dependence. It sounds contradictory—freedom and dependence—but it is the secret Job knew and the secret that can carry you through Australia’s current crisis.
Picture a single mother in Western Sydney who has just received the new mortgage statement after the recent rate rise. The numbers look impossible. Or the retiree in Adelaide watching the grocery trolley shrink because the cost of fruit and vegetables has risen. Their first instinct is to grip tighter, to worry harder, to cut deeper. But the moment they release the grip and remember “I am the manager, not the owner”, something supernatural happens. They begin to experience the exhilaration of knowing the outcome is not on their shoulders. God’s interests become theirs. They start asking different questions: “Lord, how do You want me to manage this electricity bill? Show me creative ways to steward what You have given.” And provision comes—sometimes through unexpected gifts or income, sometimes through community, sometimes through opportunities no spreadsheet could predict.
This is not pie-in-the-sky optimism. It is the practical outworking of recognising divine ownership. Every household—whether wage earner, pensioner or self-funded retiree—can step into the same freedom. The owner does not differentiate between account types; He simply provides for the needs of His managers.
The blessings that flow from this mindset cannot be measured in cents per kilowatt-hour. There is a release inside you that is genuinely liberating. The constant background hum of financial stress disappears. You sleep better. You enjoy the simple things again—Sunday lunch with the family, even if the lamb costs more. You become more generous because you are no longer guarding “your” resources. You discover you are becoming the person God always intended: calm, creative, content and far more effective as a steward than you ever were as a frantic owner.
The current cost-of-living crisis is real and painful. The ABS data proves it. The Reserve Bank’s decision will add further pressure on housing costs that already dominate budgets. But the crisis does not have the final word. Job’s story did not end in the loss; it ended in restoration and deeper relationship with the true Owner. Your story can follow the same pattern.
If the electricity bill, the rent notice or the grocery receipt has you feeling anxious or stressed—if making ends meet feels like an impossible task right now—then take hold of God’s better, worry-free way. Recognise that you own nothing and that everything is on loan from a generous Father who delights to provide. Step fully into the role of manager under His direction. Embrace the freedom of dependence.
You have nothing to lose—because none of it was yours to begin with. And when you live from that truth, the cost-of-living crisis loses its power to steal your peace. God is still in control. Your daily needs will still be supplied. The exhilaration of care-free living in the middle of Australia’s toughest economic stretch is available to you today.
The better, worry-free way is not a theory. It is a tested, proven path walked by Job and countless others through every financial storm. It is waiting for you right now. All it requires is the simple, courageous decision to hand the ownership back to the One who has always held it.
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