The hour is late so all of you in "blogger-land" get the benefit of a short post by me. I just got done balancing the checkbook and have been reminded again of a fantastic truth that i have had my eyes opened to lately. Angela and i are taking a course by Crown Financial Ministries about how God wants you to handle your money. It has been extremely convicting and has really tested my view on money in general. Again, it is late so i am not going to throw a lot of verses out there but did you know that there are over 2350 verses in the bible that have to do with money? Crazy, huh? The one verse i will quote is one that we had to memorize for the first week of the class, "Therefore, if you have not been faithful with the use of worldly wealth, who will entrust the true riches to you?" Luke 16:11. Pretty heavy, huh? We are to be stewards of the things that God has given to us. Sure, we might own it on paper, but if you believe that "the Earth is the Lord's in all it's fullness" then everything you "own" is God's and you are just taking care of it for him. I have never been one of those Christians that thinks that God wants me to be rich but i have been one of those Christians that thinks that as long as i could sell everything tomorrow and come out ahead i am doing ok. What this course has taught me is that i "should owe no many anything except a debt of love". As i got to thinking about this i realized that i am not able to help people as well when i am a slave to this bank or that mortgage company. I really can't move freely according to His will because part of whatever decision i make will at some point come to how it affects my ability to make my monthly payments on time.
Angela and i are not role models for how to manage your money but we are making a concerted effort to "attack" our debt and eliminate it. As i look around my church like i did this morning, i wonder how many other people in my church have this same issue going on. They have taken on debt for either an essential need or an unnecessary want and now they are saddled with a debt that they are struggling under. Why is it that we are never content? Angela and i have coveted a house near us that is gorgeous. It has been vacant since we have seen it so longer than 4 years. Today there was activity there! We went over to see what we could see and there were the two daughters of the owner getting it ready to sell. We asked if we could take a tour of the place and they were happy to oblige. It was just as gorgeous inside as we had imagined. Built in 1935 by the first woman to graduate from the UW school of architecture, it has a spiral staircase, a library, 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, lots of little extras and a beautiful backyard. Yeah, and only $425,000.00! What did we do with that information? We promptly went back and tried to figure out how we could afford that house! Could we? No. Did we keep thinking about it? Oh yeah! The desire for more, bigger and better is so engrained in us and that is the first thing that we need to correct. The desire for "stuff".
As i recall, John the baptizer said, "i must decrease and He must increase". The same is true for me, i must decrease and He must increase. God does not have 10% of my paycheck. He has it all. I am just His steward.
4 comments:
Dude, excellent insight, thank you.
I think that if we are pursuing wealth at the expense of having debt that is a serious matter.
I read a book this winter called, Colossians Remixed, which talked about our Consumer practices as Americans.
I appreciate your engaging the critical issues, such as always buying something new. I as well as anyone buy products to fulfill my desires, so I am not acting as if I am not guilty of doing that.
Your insights have allowed me to once again think of ways that I can follow Jesus in a consumerist society. It is tough sometimes.
Thanks.
Thanks for the response! I will let you know more as i learn it. They told a story about how a factory went into some town in Latin America. I am sorry but the name of the town escapes me now. Anyway, they built the factory, went out and recruited people to come work. They came to work for a week and at the end of the week they got a paycheck. The next day no one showed up. When they went to the town to see what the problem was, everyone was relaxing and/or going about living. The managers from the factory went to the people and asked them why they weren't going back to work. The response was, "We now have everything we need and don't need to go back to work." The was obviously a problem for the managers of the factory who had deadlines to meet so they came up with an idea. They sent out catalogs to the townspeople for them to look at. Soon enough, people came back to the factory to work. Not because they were short of funds for living, but because they saw things in the catalog that they wanted. The didn't need them per se, but it was motivation enough to work. Now compare and contrast that to why we go to work.
Talk more soon.
That is an interesting illustration, because of many varying reasons. I, of course have some questions, mainly to clarify this story. I understand that you said you did not have the exact details, but it makes it for interesting debate anyway. :)
First, I wonder what the townspeople had done for work before the factory moved in. Was it an tribal culture which used the land for food? Did they actually already have various forms of work, within the town, therefore, they did not need to work at the factory for sustenance?
Giving them a catalog of what they could buy, more or less creates in them a modern idea of life, which is based upon the substance of things for the sake of them, not for the sake of living. Isn't that interesting. That is the why the Baby Boomer generation used the resources of the earth to almost unlimited potential, which has diminished them for the next generation.
I would compare the reason that most American work to the reason you state below, not explicitly, but implicit. It has also a lot to do with the fact that it is a cultural value. Our society places value upon human beings for "what they do", not who they are, meaning human. That is usually in social settings the first question asked of people.
Of course it is sometimes a question to start a conversation, but it is what defines our existence as human, which is not what we as Christians believe. We find worth and value in people, because God has deemed them to have value and worth, outside of any other factors. God created them and said that it was "good".
Enjoy the discussion.
If you only post once a week, I am going to be forced to start calling you again. :) LOL
Post a Comment