money

Here’s the Perfect Solution If You Want a Worry-Free Life

/ Clay D. / 1 Comment

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?

Matt. 6:24-25

How many of us are guilty of the sin of worrying about our finances? (Yes, it’s a sin to worry—whether it’s about money or anything else.)

It’s so easy to slip into the old familiar pattern of fretting while looking over our monthly bills, or of getting discouraged when we’re trying to balance our household budget. 

However, God doesn’t want us to worry—at all. Over and over in the Bible, we find that truth.

In fact, right in this passage, He tells us how to avoid worry and anxiety about our everyday needs. 

You see, if money is what drives us, we’re naturally going to worry. If money is your chief goal, then there will never be enough of it to satisfy you. 

For example, if you’re short on money, you’ll worry about how to get more. And if you’ve got plenty of money to pay your bills, you’ll worry about losing your income and your standard of living. 

It’s a NO WIN situation when you serve money. 

On the other hand, if we’re serving God, we can relax free and easy. That’s right—we can go through life without money worries. He will provide us with everything we need—food, clothes, and shelter. 

As we’re told a few verses down the page, God already knows what we need anyway. By the time we get around to asking for help, He has already put His plan into action for our provision. 

But the key is to seek His kingdom first—you’ve got to give Him 100%. Not 90%…not even 99%…but all of you.

We have to put serving God and His purposes at the very top of our list. Everything we do must be geared toward living with God as the #1 priority in our lives. 

I, for one, have too often been guilty of trying to serve both God and money. I mean, surely it can be done, right? 

I’ve thought, I can put in these extra hours at work and still keep my focus on God. I can squeeze a little time in for God here and there during the day or just before bed. That will be fine, won’t it?

WRONG. There is no person on the planet who has the means to put both God and money at the top of their list of priorities. It will always be one of the two, to the exclusion of the other. 

It’s much wiser to take God at His word and make Him the priority, as you’ll receive all the rewards of serving Him AND have your needs met at the same time. 

However, try to make money the object of desire in your life and you’ll miss out on a fulfilling, enriching relationship with God, as well as many of the blessings He has in mind for you.

Our Father wants us to make the wise choice, so He lays it all out for us in these two wonderful verses. 

He tells us flat out that it’s impossible to serve both Him and money, so don’t even try. “Therefore…” He says (and this is a big “therefore”), we can live without worry and anxiety.

He’s saying first of all that it’s pointless to try to put Him and money at the head of our lives, AND as a result of this truth, we don’t have to worry about “things” because He will take care of all that—so long as we seek His kingdom first.

So, if you want a life that’s free from worry, anxiety, and stress, seek God first. Everything else will fall into place. 

He’s waiting for you to make the right choice.

Don’t Let Money Come Between You and God

/ Clay D. / 1 Comment

Don’t let money come between you and God. 

That’s the thought that struck me this morning as I was working. I wrote that sentence down so that I could expand on it later. 

The idea was that you shouldn’t look to God as your source of money and then blame Him when you don’t have enough of it (or feel like you have enough). 

He tells us that He’s our source, that everything comes through Him. He’s our provider for all our sustenance and needs:

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Matt. 6:31-33

However, if we truly believe that, AND we feel like there’s a lack in our lives, we can get to the point where we blame God for our money problems. That if we’re relying on Him and He doesn’t come through, then He’s the problem. 

Matthew 6:24 tells us that you can’t serve both God and money. You’ll end up loving the one and hating the other. Take your pick, but you can’t have it both ways, we’re told. 

I believe it’s far too easy to get to the point where we blame God for our situation in life. I know that I’ve personally done that many, many times—too many to even count. 

I’ve felt like God “owed” me because I was seeking Him. That since I was a “good” Christian, I deserved to live a better lifestyle. 

After all, I can look around and see other people with bigger houses, newer cars, more exotic vacations. Some of these people are followers of Christ, and some of them aren’t. 

Since I am a believer in Christ, I should at least have as lavish a lifestyle as someone who couldn’t care less about God, right? Am I not entitled to be a little disgruntled if I struggle with finances and the guy who owns a strip club is raking in the dough?

That’s silly thinking I know. But I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s ever felt that way. It does make you wonder why God allows the so-called “evil” person to prosper, when those who are “faithful” are left to wonder how they’re going to pay their bills each month.

I guess that’s the whole point. To fall into that trap of wrongful thinking, my whole attitude toward money must be misguided. I’ve placed money above my relationship with God. 

Somewhere along the way I decided that if I didn’t have the kind of money I thought I should, then God isn’t holding up His end of the deal.

And that’s just completely wrong. Without a doubt, it’s wrong. Money has become more important than God if I’m allowing it to influence how I feel about Him.

I realize this truth, but it’s hard to break out of that pattern of thinking. In fact, I’ve been trying for years, decades even, to be free from this line of wrongful thinking. 

Sometimes I feel that I’m no closer to where I should be than I was 25 years ago. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever get to the point where my alignment with money and God is correct. 

If I could finally, at last, learn the lesson about money and finances that God has been trying to teach me for so long, then perhaps He would bless me with more money. 

But isn’t it wrong to even think in those terms? If I only want to learn the lesson for the ultimate outcome of gaining more money, isn’t that really just perpetuating a vicious cycle that I’ll never break out of?

I have to get to the point where I don’t care how much money I have, a lot or a little—it doesn’t matter. I must accept, and get down into the core of my very being, that God is all I need. That He is my all in all—my provider, my savior, my father. 

I must truly believe that it matters not whether I have a little or a lot, as long as I have God (through my faith in Christ), then I have all I need in this life.

Don’t Get Too Attached to Your Problems

/ Clay D. / 1 Comment

We all have problems and challenges in our lives—that much is for certain. 

If you’re like me, you may often feel like your problems are never going to go away, that whatever situation you’re in is permanent. I can take a quick inventory of all the negative circumstances in my life and it’s easy to picture them always being there. 

Try this exercise…Think back five years ago and try to remember how your life was and what problems you were facing at that time. Chances are, these problems were quite different from your current problems. Now picture your life 10 years ago—there’s an even greater difference between then and now.

The point is that those problems weren’t permanent, and neither are the ones you’re up against now. 

Pick a specific challenge from the past and think about it for a moment. It could be pertaining to money, health, relationships, career, or anything else. Now, think about how the problem got resolved. It most likely didn’t go away in an instant. 

Sometimes we find ourselves in a situation where a problem or challenge is immediately resolved, but it seems more often than not, the roadblocks in our path gradually fade away and become less of a concern. Or maybe they were never real problems to begin with; perhaps we were worried about something that never came to pass.

At any rate, money problems don’t right themselves overnight, and neither do relationship or health problems in most cases. Most of the big challenges in our lives take time to resolve, and the ones in your life today are the same. 

You may pause one day in the future and suddenly realize that the big challenge that had been weighing you down is gone. It happened gradually and with no fanfare, so you didn’t even notice that it was no longer in your life.

This should give us hope for our current problems. We can almost certainly count on the fact that whatever we’re dealing with now will not remain a problem for the rest of our lives. Change is the only constant, goes the old saying.

Think about it…You don’t have the same set of problems as a 40-something as you did when you were 16, do you? Of course not. Those problems from long ago seem so trivial and mundane compared to what we’re facing now, don’t they?

The good news is that today’s problems will look the same way a few years from now. You’ll look back at your current set of circumstances and wonder why you ever wasted so much mental energy worrying about them. It may not feel that way right now, but it usually works out that way.

So, the bottom line is this…Whatever problems are before you, take comfort in the fact that you won’t be forever dealing with them. There will just be new and different challenges to take their place. 

We WILL face problems in life, so we’ll do better by coming to terms with that fact sooner rather than later. It just won’t always be the same problems.

Maybe we should start viewing life as a series of puzzles or challenges that need figuring out. Who knows, that might put more joy in our lives, rather than filling us with frustration that things aren’t going how we think they should.

It’s worth a try…