living a life that counts ~ our money

Read Matthew 6:19-24
To live a life that counts we need to learn how to manage three things well. The first is our time. As we saw last week, life is short and so we need to make the most of each and every day God gives us. We need to spend time listening to God, loving our family and serving God as we love and serve the people around. The second thing we need to manage well is our money. Money management is clearly the #1 issue we face in the world today. Whether it is the mortgage crisis, the massive amount of personal debt we have accumulated as individuals or as a nation, or the declining stock market all that we read and hear about today is the global economic recession and the job and financial crisis that we face. In an effort to address the problem, in the last few months our government has passed three bills that will spend close 2 Trillion dollars to help the economy. I don’t know about you, but I can’t even comprehend how much a trillion dollars really is.

I read this week that if you laid $1 dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from the earth to the moon and back 200 times before you would use a trillion dollars. And if we spent a million dollars every day since Jesus was born we would still not have spent a trillion dollars and we will be spending almost 2 trillion on the TARP bill, stimulus package and spending bills combined. It’s hard to figure out where that kind of money will come from or how we will ever pay off the debt that it will create, but that’s where we are today. We face economic problems that seem so overwhelming that it’s hard to know where to start or what to do, but here’s where we need to start, (pull out wallet) with our own wallets and our own money. While we may feel powerless when we think about the global economic recession, we are not powerless when it comes to our own personal finances, and since God has called us to be good stewards of all He has given us we need to learn how to manage our money well. Money management is not just a financial issue – it is a spiritual issue. Jesus talked more about money than any other subject and the bible is full of teachings on how we are to earn, spend, save and give money.

In Matt. 6 Jesus said do not store up treasures on earth where moth and rust can destroy – or where a days trading in the stock market can wipe it all out – but instead store up treasure in heaven. Now this does not mean we don’t work hard to earn money and it doesn’t mean we don’t save and invest and even spend our money wisely. What Jesus is saying is that money can not be our master. We can’t trust our money to solve all our problems and we can’t turn to our wealth to find life’s ultimate meaning and fulfillment. If the focus of our life is money – it will become our master and we will lose sight of God. And it doesn’t matter if we have a lot of money or a little bit of money, if the focus of our lives is money – we run the risk of losing sight of God.

Look at Proverbs 30:8b-9. What these verses show us is that money is neither good nor bad; it is when we focus on money that we run into problems. If we have a lot of money and focus on that we might begin to think that we have all we need & so we don’t need God. With too much money we run the risk of turning from God to trusting in ourselves or in the wealth we have accumulated. But there is also a danger when we have too little money. Proverbs 30 says if we don’t have enough to live on we might become so desperate that we would steal. Let’s broaden that out & see that having too little money could cause other problems as well. We might become bitter toward God or jealous and angry of others who have more. We might not trust God to meet our needs and once again take matters into our own hands. We might engage in unethical dealings & then justify our actions because we are poor. We might just give up our hands and allow someone else to just take care of us forever. Poverty can cause us to compromise our honesty and integrity as much as greed can, so there is a danger in having too much money and there is a danger in having too little, but the danger doesn’t come from the money, it comes from our attitude toward money. When our focus is on our money – we lose sight of God, so the first key to Godly money management is making sure that God is at the center of our lives.

One of the ways we keep God at the center of our lives when we look at our financial situation is to remember that it all belongs to God in the first place. This is really the first rule of Christian money management – it all belongs to God. In Psalm 50:10 it says the cattle on a thousand hillsides belong to God – but God also owns the hillsides. God owns it all and God simply gives each of us a portion of his creation to use according to his purpose. When we look at the money we have we can never forget that it is God who has provided us with this money because it is God who provides us with the knowledge, skill and opportunity to work. Look at Dtr. 8:18. God is the one who gives us the ability to produce wealth, therefore what we have really does not belong to us – it all belongs to God and we need to begin to see things from that perspective.

When we begin to think that the money in our wallets, bank accounts, pension fund or money market accounts belongs to us, then we have lost sight of God. What we need to do is retrain ourselves so that when we look at our money, when we pay our bills, when we balance our checkbook or make a budget we think of it all as God’s money which we are to use according to God’s principles and for God’s purpose. It’s a radical way to think of our money and our lives – but it’s the foundation to a biblical view of money and wealth and that foundation has to be in place before we can explore how God wants us to use our money.

So it all belongs to God, but what are we supposed to do with it? Instead of trying to focus on the details of personal money management – which will be different for each of us, let’s look at three basic financial and biblical principles which apply to all of us. John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said that we when it comes to money we should gain all we can, save all we can and give all we can, so let’s look at these three financial principles.

From a biblical perspective, gaining all we can means being willing to work hard and be productive. If we go back to the story of creation we see that we were created in the image of God and the God of creation is a God who worked. And the work of creation was hard enough that after 6 days God needed to rest. So if we are in the image of God – part of what we were created for is to work. Working and being productive is part of who we are and so we need to take the talents, gifts, resources and opportunities God gives us and gain all we can. Proverbs warns against the dangers of being idle and the apostle Paul told the people of Thessalonica to work hard. Look at 2 Thess. 3:6-10. God calls us to work hard and gain what we can in this world, but let’s also be clear that we are not to do this at the expense of our health or our families. Gaining all we can is not a license to work too many hours and neglect our families and it does not mean that we destroy our health by not taking the time out for our physical, emotional and spiritual needs for rest and refreshment. Remember being created in the image of God means that need to time to rest. God even commands us to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

Along with gaining all we can we are also called to save all we can. The personal saving rate for the US at the end of last year was just 1.3% or our income. The reality is that if you are out of work or struggling to make ends meet at the end of the month, it’s hard to find the money to save, so maybe to help us save all can we need to sit down and work out a budget. Making a budget is really just establishing a good financial plan for you and your family and you have probably heard the saying, if you fail to plan you plan to fail. So if you want to plan to save it’s important to begin by setting up a budget and when you do this talk to your family about it. Talk to your children about setting up a budget so they can begin to learn some good money management principles. Schools don’t teach children how to balance a checkbook, or how to live within a budget so it’s important to take the time to sit down and talk about financial issues as a family. What choices do families need to make in these hard economic times to not only get out of debt but begin to save.

Talking about a budget with your family raises another issue when it comes to our finances and money management. It’s important for couples and families to talk about money. I am amazed every time I read that the #1 cause of divorce is financial stress. I read this week that 54% of all divorces are related to financial issues. For healthy marriages, couples need to talk about their finances and be honest about their financial goals and how household money needs to be spent and saved. The more we avoid talking about money, the more money and the problems related to our finances can drive a wedge into our relationships. So saving all we can requires some planning, establishing a budget and then some open and honest discussion about how we spend our money.

The third financial principle John Wesley gave us was to give all we can. Proverbs 11:24-25 says:
We need to give all we can because God’s blessing comes when we give. When we give we are blessed. When we give to God, or when we give to others, we will be blessed. One of the clear biblical principles on giving is the tithe, or giving 10% of our income to God’s work in and through the church & God says when we tithe we will be blessed with more – it may not be more money, it may just be more peace and strength because we know we are honoring God with our lives and living a life that counts. So tithing is a good principle for us to consider, but it is just that, a principle. There is no law that says all Christians must tithe, it is just a clear solid practice that many people find is a good place to start. Notice I said a good place to start. While for many people tithing is the goal, when we look at how Jesus calls us to give we see that his teaching goes well beyond giving 10%.

Jesus looked at a rich man and said, give all you have to the poor and then come follow me. Jesus didn’t say tithe and then follow me, he said sell all you have and give it away. Jesus commended a poor woman who gave to the work of God all she had to live on. He didn’t say anything about the faithful people who gave their tithe – he elevated and celebrated the woman who gave sacrificially. And in the early church it says that the people shared all that they had with one another. They didn’t give their 10% and call it finished, they gave all they could & so while tithing is a solid principle for us to hold up – it really is just the starting gate - the call of God to give goes much deeper. We are called by God to give all we can to God and to the people of God and to the work of God around the world.

We forget sometimes that giving to God was the center of worship in the Old Testament. Worship for the people of God revolved around the sacrifice and the offerings people gave to God and so giving to God all we can is an act of worship that can’t be ignored or put off – it is central to our lives of worship. I hope that you get that sense every time we receive an offering in worship. I am always humbled by the fact that God calls us to give ourselves to him in this way. God wants us to give because God wants to use us as part of his working in this world. What an honor for us to be used by God in this way.

Because giving really is an act of worship, we will never give the way God calls us to give – sacrificially and completely – until we place God at the center of our lives because the trust it takes to give away our possessions, the trust it takes to tithe or give beyond the tithe is only possible if we first place God at the center or our hearts and lives and love and trust him alone. So it all comes back to the foundation and our understanding that all we have really belongs to God and we are simply called to use it according to God’s principles and for God’s purpose. Since God has entrusted us with a great deal of wealth, we will never live a life that really until we learn how to use our money according to the principles and plan of God. So let us gain all we can, save all we can and give all we can.