Seeking A Little More Wealth

Have you noticed that wealth has a bad reputation these days?

No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. - Luke 16:13

In today's Gospel, Jesus is coming down hard on the Pharisees.  They seem to be his favorite target group, almost as if he would have liked to start an Occupy Temple movement and they were the 1%.

I can understand the dilemma.  If you spend all your time making money and managing the money you have made, what time is left for God?

But you would think it would be easier to serve God if all your bills are paid and you no longer have to work, right?

Of course, there is the problem of knowing when that time comes.  And I think that is the problem of trying to please two masters.  We wind up wanting a little more, a little more time, a little more security, a little more wealth.

When I make my million, I'll devote my time to serving God.

I know a lot of folks who would never consider themselves wealthy, even though many have retired with a secure pension or income stream and can devote their time to ministry.

Are they serving one master or two?

For them, the strategy of seeking wealth before serving God worked.  So, why would Jesus be against that?

My mother used to sing a rhyme to me whenever I was troubled by something she felt was not as important as I made it.

Poor Little William, sitting on a fence, trying to make a dollar out of ninety-nine cents.

I hated to hear that rhyme because it made me feel silly, like my concerns were not valid.

What she was saying was what Jesus was saying.  I was focusing on the insignificant, the impossible, and wasting time fretting over what could be changed.

Sometimes we all get caught up in the balancing act of trying to make what little we have become more, whether we are talking about our own finances or the church budgets.

There will never be enough.

If we suddenly get an inheritance or an endowment, where would it go?

We have to believe we can focus on God first and leave the worry about the money to Him.  That doesn't mean we don't need to work for it.  It means we have to have faith that putting His work first will open our eyes to opportunities to fill in all the blanks in our checkbooks and collection plates.

I know of one church that said they needed $250,000 to do God's work and in a few short weeks before Christmas, with a positive, in-your-face, on-the-internet campaign, they met their goal.

I believe people will give from the heart if they believe the goal is to serve God.

That doesn't mean they don't want the bills paid or the snow plowed or the pastor's salary covered.  It means those things need to be for the glory of God and His work.

Why is that so hard for us to remember?

That, I think, is the problem of the two masters.

In our church, we are about to change the whole way we look at our financial situation.  Instead of focusing on the gaps, we are going to celebrate the potential to do much more for God.

I'll let you know how it goes.

More to come...