I'm not gonna lie. I like money and most people I know do too. Especially as a high school senior, it seems like all I do is fill out forms so I can get more money for college or do something that costs large amounts of money. Whether I want to admit it or not, most of what I do and where I go is determined by how much money I have or how much money it will cost me. Our society revolves around this concept of having money. Inability to make money or handle money could mean poverty, relationship destruction, added stress in the home, and significantly less opportunities to excel. Possessing large amounts of money could be equivocated with being a wokoholic, living wastefully or frivolously, more relationship strain, and mental and emotional stress. I pay for a private school education so that I can pay for more education so that I can make more money in my life so that I will have more money when I retire so that I can leave some money behind when I die. Notice a reoccurring theme? Money.
But have you ever noticed what is written on every piece of American currency that you handle?
"In God We Trust"
Kind of ironic, isn't it? The thing we trust God with the least, our finances, is the very thing that has "In God We Trust" plastered all over it. We spend our entire lives trying to get by on our own. It's one of the most variable things in our lives. It's presence or absence is vital to maintaining our lifestyles.Our time revolves around being self-sufficient, but that's not what God wants.
II Corinthians 3:5 says, "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God..."
Our money is not our own. Our talent is not our own. Our lives are not our own. When we become Christians we hand everything over to God, including our finances. We don't find our sufficiency in our wallets. We find it in our Bibles. Luke 16:13 tells us that we cannot serve both God and money. So we must choose one or the other. There's no halfway. Lovers of money cannot be lovers of God (and I'd say that if you spend more time trying to make money than you do glorifying God, you must love it more). God wants us to work diligently, support our families, utilize the gifts we have, and glorify him all at the same time, but when we stop glorifying him and start glorifying money, we're in the same troublesome boat as the rest of society. So, will you put your trust in your Savior or savings account?
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