Take for example James 5 :
“For listen! Hear the cries of the field workers whom you have cheated of their pay. The wages you held back cry out against you. The cries of those who harvest your fields have reached the ears of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. You have spent your years on earth in luxury, satisfying your every desire. You have fattened yourselves for the day of slaughter.“
Yikes! James specifically speaks to our attitude on money. First, we learned the money isn’t ours. It’s God’s. Everything we have comes from him. Time, talents, resources. God wants us to be STEWARDS for him.
Remember, a steward is an ‘asset manager’. So we are ultimately managing God’s money.
Here are some questions to consider:
- Is our security in our wealth rather than in God?
- How much time have we spent fretting over economic loss and the % loss of our 401K in the past 6 months? Or how much money we make? Or how much we have or don’t have in savings?
- Is our attitude that of hoarding what we do have, or giving generously with confidence in God’s provision?
- How can we make investments in God’s kingdom here on earth?
- Have we spent our years on earth in luxury, satisfying our every desire?
- Has anyone ever gone without on our account, because we weren’t willing to give obediently?
We also touched on the idea that our instant gratification mentality causes us to spend more than we have-- via debt. It chains us to the lender and ultimately forces us to serve two masters.
Proverbs 22 says. “The rich rule over the poor and the borrower is slave to the lender.”We’ve all been given one extra dollar to intentionally invest in God’s Kingdom.
Please comment below on how God led you to invest the dollar. My hope is that it would be an encouragement to everyone who reads it.
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I struggle with this subject a lot! I was raised to save, save, save... but then that leads to focus on how much I have. Is it selfish to buy a big house? If so, would having people over make it less selfish?
ReplyDeleteOne thing I found after I graduated from college is that one of my spirtual gifts is actually giving. I get a lot of joy from knowing that the money I give to missionaries, for example, lets them do work about which they're really passionate. Sometimes I'm tempted to feel guilty that I've never felt called to a foreign mission field, but I suppose some of us have to be givers or else no one could go! (I know I'm not excused from being missional, but it just happens that "mission trips" haven't been my thing.)
When I find that I'm envious of other people's money, which is really easy for me to do, that's usually a sign to me that I'm not trusting God for my provision, but rather am starting to worship money. While I do feel very blessed by God, I think if I *had* made a million dollars in stock options (which was my college plan ;) ), I would find it much harder to be generous. I'm still learning to be faithful with a few things, because I think money is one of the hardest things to scale up in faithfulness.
I'm off to camp with 9th Graders this week. I'm going to spend this dollar to buy a root beer for a kid... not sure who... but I'll keep it in my back pocket ready to go as I sit down throughout the week with each kid to talk about life what they think of our Creator.
ReplyDelete-Peder