Today we start a 3 part series on Finances. So to start off, I pose this question;
As men, do we place our financial trust in the simple act of addition and subtraction or do we place it in the hands of our Creator?
The answer may seem simple but in a world that is obsessed with “getting”, and “Me”, what should be a simple answer of Our Creator, becomes “in the hands of our creator unless the math doesn’t add up then we have to solve the problem ourselves.
Luke 6:30 (NLT) “Give to anyone who asks; and when things are taken away from you, don’t try to get them back.”
Living life as a Christian, one who is Christ-like, can seem like an impossible task. In many ways it is backward of everything we have been taught. This idea that we should “Give to anyone that asks” doesn’t make sense. Yet, here it is in black and white in the Bible.
There are three principles that I think we need to apply to our lives to have true peace in our finances:
1. AS CHRISTIANS, WE ARE ASKED TO GIVE WITHOUT ANY THOUGHT OF RETURN This single statement can completely turn our world upside down, and you may even be tempted to stop reading at this point. I would encourage you to think deeply about this idea, go to your Bible and look up all the passages about giving and see how many say anything about what you get in return. The world says, to take every advantage that we can, get what you can out of life, and the worst statement ever is “Business is Business”. Business may be Business but the Word of God should permeate every aspect of our life, especially our finances
2. AS CHRISTIANS, WE ARE TO FORGIVE Forgiveness in our society is another aspect of the Christian life that is under attack. We are a society that wants what is rightfully mine. If we have a proper understanding of who God is and where he stands in our lives, we can understand that when someone does us wrong, especially in the area of finances, they have not truly offended us, they have offended God. If they have not repaid a loan, they have not cheated us, because the money was not ours to begin with. All that we have belongs to the Father.
3. AS CHRISTIANS, WE ARE TO FORGET This is probably the hardest one of us to master but when we can truly come to a Biblical understanding of what it is to “Forgive and Forget”, we will begin to see our Creator, our Friends, our Family and our pocketbook in a completely different light. We are called to “Love our neighbor as ourselves” and we see later in scripture that “Love keeps no record of wrong doing”.
Becoming Christ-like in our finances is no easy task, given the world that we live in today. Let me leave you with one final thought!
Our financial lives, like our relationships, have an order of priority. Before we do anything else, we need to give back to “the giver of all good things” so we set aside our first fruits to go back to God for the work of the kingdom. Then we take care of those that God has placed in our sphere of influence, including those “who have need”. Finally we set aside for ourselves.