Friday, September 7, 2012

The Co$t of Di$ciple$hip

Ecclesiastes 5:10

He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.


1 Timothy 6:10

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.


Love is an all-consuming thing.  If you love something or someone, you cannot get enough of it or them.  There is always a desire for more.   This is a great gift of God and one implanted within us to draw us to Him, the never-ending source of all things.  It is precisely this feature God created in our spiritual DNA that will make an eternity with Him full of joy and expectation.  When we love Him, we cannot get enough of Him and He is the only Person or thing of which there will eternally be an abundance.

If you love money, you will always want more of it and do whatever it takes to protect the sum of it you have already obtained.  Money is finite.  There is only so much one can possess. There is only so much one can own and you never own all of it, despite your best efforts to the contrary. 

This craving for more and more has led many to wander from the faith and pierce themselves with many troubles.  They do it to themselves.  They come near the throne of grace and in the cost/benefit analysis of their life opt for money as a source of security rather than the Author of all currency.  If you choose the creation over the Creator, you will bring upon yourself much grief and anxiety unnecessarily.

Money is not evil.  The love of money is evil. 

No one can love two masters.  You will either love one and hate the other, or vice versa.  Two masters will have two different ideas of what is best and you will have to choose which master masters the other.  Ecclesiastes says it clearly:  those who love money will never be satisfied with money (no matter how much they have). 

Those who love God however will ever be satisfied in Him.  An infinte desire is met in an infinite Source.  The Giver of a insatiable appetite becomes Himself the eternal bread of life for us.  We are ever nourished and sated only by He who created our desire. 

P.S. If you cannot live off of $25,000/year, the problem is not that you need to make $40,000/year.  You need to learn to live within your means of $25,000/year.  The person who does not tithe off of $50,000/year will not tithe off of $100,000/year.  Do not deceive yourself.  If you have a hard time giving God $5,000/year, you will have a harder time giving $10,000/year, not an easier time.  Everyone is more saintly in the hypothetical future.  Don't justify today's rebellion by telling me about the obedience you will have when the sitation hopefully better suits you tomorrow.

No comments:

Post a Comment