It is both amazing and alarming at the ease in which the love of money can creep into our hearts.
Jesus tells us in the Sermon on the Mount:
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." - Matthew 6:24
It's not that you shouldn't simultaneously serve God and money. It's that you cannot simultaneously serve God and money. Serving money means that we see created things as better than the Creator of things. It means we see the cheap promises of satisfaction right now as greater than the gospel promises of Jesus even though many of those come later...
Have you considered how infatuated we are with material things in our culture? How even a lot of professing Christians and churches are caught up in it? Is it possible that instead of you owning money and material possessions, that they actually own you? Consider the following and take serious inventory of your heart:
- If you are unable to make responsible financial decisions because you’ve got to have this toy or that toy, money owns you
- If ‘responsible financial decisions’ are determined by worldly financial sense with no grounding in or wisdom from Scripture, money owns you
- If you are unable to be generous because you’ve got to pay off this debt or that debt, money owns you
- If you are unable to give toward the Kingdom today, because you’re worried about whether God can take care of you tomorrow, money owns you
- If you daydream about what you can do with a 1.5 billion dollar Lottery ticket payout, money owns you
- If you are envious of what others can do with their money that you can’t, money owns you
- If you relish the euphoria brought about by purchasing a new car, or clothes, or electronics, or whatever, money owns you
- If you can’t tip because the waitress wasn’t up to your standards today at lunch, money owns you
- If you like the feeling you get by people knowing you’ve got money, whether it’s a stock broker, or your insurance agent, or the president of the bank, money owns you
- If you think, “I’d be a better person, or a better Christian, or have a better life - if I just had some more money”, money owns you
- If you try and manipulate God for financial blessings, money owns you
- If you think God’s love for you is manifested in financial prosperity, money owns you
- If you think the gospel is just about getting to heaven, but doesn’t change the way you actually use your money now, money owns you
- If you have no real desire to be generous because you worked hard for the money you have, money owns you
- If you’re a senseless spender, money owns you
- If you’re a Scrooge-esque saver, money owns you
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