Stewardship turns a life of means into a life of meaning
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
Ephesians 5:15-17
‘Every day is an opportunity,’ so the saying goes. With that in mind…
The Bible calls us to make the best use of our time by making the most of every opportunity. It is in this context that God’s word exhorts us to understand what the Lord’s will is.
The alternative is foolishness. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
Understand What the Lord’s Will is
I simply cannot accept that the best use of my time is a daily commute to and from the office, working ten hours a day, five or six days a week, over and over for the forty to fifty most productive years of my life — quietly treading water as the current carries me toward retirement.
Honestly, that feels more like foolishness than understanding what the Lord’s will is. I acknowledge not every Christian will feel that way. No judgment. That is between you and God.
However, I would challenge every believer to consider the passage in this context.
Ephesians 5:15 exhorts me to be very careful, then, how [I] live. This is something I should take very seriously.
Be very careful, then how you live…
Ephesians 5:15
As a believer, it is my duty to first understand what the Lord’s will is for my life. And, once I understand that, to spend all my energy and — time — striving to live out that purpose.
To that end, my goal is to stop spending all of my time trying to earn money and, instead, spend my money to reclaim my time. That will enable me to fulfill God’s will and purposes in my life.
How does this passage challenge you? Have you been careful about how you live? In other words, have you been deliberate in considering how you spend your time?
And do you believe that you are living not as unwise, but as wise? Do you understand what the Lord’s will is?
Are you making the most of every opportunity? Or have you spent your time foolishly?
I pray that you understand what God’s will is and that, by His grace, you have the wisdom and courage to live out that purpose in your life.
I have heard many sermons preached against the love of money and pursuit of riches in the Christian walk. Any pastor teaching this will get no argument from me. The message is valid and should be taught from the pulpit.
However, these sermons often fall short because the shy away from the whole truth. Challenging the pursuit of riches is easy. Challenging pursuit of the mundane and ordinary requires true courage when it comes to living out God’s purpose for our lives.
Challenging the pursuit of riches is easy. Challenging pursuit of the mundane and ordinary requires true courage.
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
What do I mean by that? I’ll try to clarify.
It’s easy to spot the love of money in a person who is obsessed with acquiring riches; one who loves the idea of a lavish lifestyle, indulging in fast cars, luxury yachts and private jets. It is equally easy to call that out and show, from scripture, that this is not God’s will for our lives as believers. There is more to life than making lots of money!
When preaching such sermons, our pastors are generally speaking to those hidden lusts of the flesh; those things we secretly wish for but which we would never actually try to reach for in reality, or talk about with our fellow-believers — partly because we know this is not God’s will and partly because they are so unattainable.
It is less easy to challenge those mundane — dare I say, ordinary — pursuits like facing the daily commute to and from the office. Or putting in eight to ten hours a day in a cubicle, and then bringing the laptop home so we can spend our evenings and weekends catching up on the work we didn’t quite get to between 8AM and 6PM… and doing this for forty-five years or more. Quietly treading water to retirement.
Of course, we have to do these things in order to pay our mortgage, or make rent. Or how about making monthly payments on our vehicle finance and paying down the credit-card debt we incurred on our latest tech purchases, like games consoles and big-screen TV’s.
Nobody could accuse a person in this position of pursuing riches. That is simply not the goal. Rather, it is a fight to survive, living pay-check to pay-check.
And yet…
Still others, like seed thrown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.
Mark 4:18-19
This is the result of a life spent pursuing the ordinary. The worries of this life (mortgages and bill payments) and desires for other things grow up like thorns, choking the word of God in our hearts and in our lives. Those ‘thorns’ render us forever unfruitful as we become consumed by a career and neglect God’s call on our lives.
How is this living out God’s purpose?
You may have noticed I skipped over the deceitfulness of riches in the above paragraph. Let’s address that now. What is the deceitfulness of riches in this context, if not the lie that we are doing okay, living out God’s plan, simply because we have not spent all our energy in the pursuit of riches?
Living Out God’s Purpose
Here is the hard truth. If life isn’t all about making lots of money, it most certainly isn’t all about making ends meet. Where is God in either of those pursuits?
If life isn’t all about making lots of money, it most certainly isn’t all about making ends meet. Where is God in either of those pursuits?
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
So, here is my call for each of us; to challenge the mundane and ordinary in our own lives. Yes, I led with the sermons preached by our pastors — but it is not our pastor’s job to give us the courage we need to live out God’s will and purpose for our lives. That responsibility falls to each of us.
Are you prepared to look deep inside your own heart and challenge those areas where you have become unfruitful? Possibly areas where you have allowed the comfort of the ordinary and mundane to choke the word of God in your heart?
Don’t be afraid or let the past hold you back. Take courage. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Can you commit to living out God’s purpose for your life? Imagine where will God take you — if only you let Him!
From greed to contentment. Result; savings. From fear to knowledge. Result; increase.
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
From financial foolishness to financial wisdom. Result; stewardship.
Despite the widespread freedom and wealth that much of the first world enjoys and even takes for granted, millions of hard-working people still feel trapped and impoverished by crippling debt and mounting bills.
Christians are not immune to this pain. In fact, many hard-working first world believers feel this way. Trapped in never-ending servitude or chained by financial bondage from which there seems to be no escape.
Why would Christians, who are rich in Christ, still feel poor?
The answer is simple. In order to maintain their current lifestyle and pay their bills each month, a sacrifice is required — and that sacrifice is time. Everybody knows and accepts this. However, when a person spends all their time trying to earn money, the result is time-poverty. When this happens, regardless of how much money they earn, that person will always feel poor.
Overcoming the love of money is the only way out of this financial prison.
When a person spends all their time trying to earn money, the result is time-poverty
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
Some have chased after riches to overcome this but that is not God’s way. As Christians, we know that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil and the Bible is very clear on this.
The truth is that most Christians don’t want to be rich. What they really long for is freedom. Freedom from the fear that drives them to the office each day. Freedom from the obligations that keep them chained to a desk forty to sixty hours each week. Freedom to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness without the constant worry of how to make rent or put food on the table.
In short, most Christians who feel stuck in a constant state of financial struggle don’t want more money. What they long for is more time!
I define true wealth as the freedom to:
- Pursue God’s will and purposes
- Spend time with those we love
- Give generously
The good news for all believers is this. We can!
Overcoming the Love of Money
By understanding what the Bible really teaches about managing money, every believer can find that freedom. And they can do it with little or no more money than they have right now.
The truth is that many Christians could achieve true wealth with little or no more money than they have now.
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
The only requirement is a commitment to Stewardship. That means studying God’s word on the subject of money and learning to properly manage the resources with which He has already blessed us.
The secret is really quite simple. Instead of spending all of our time trying to earn money, we need learn how to spend our money in such a way that we get back our time!
This means we need to become more deliberate about how we spend our money. It means changing our spending patterns so that we are planting seed for next year’s harvest (i.e. investing) rather than consuming all we earn on fleeting pleasures that have no long-term or eternal value.
We can only achieve this by first recognizing, and then overcoming the love of money that drives those poor spending patterns that keep us in a constant state of financial struggle.
Love of money is a spiritual state of heart; wealth — or poverty — are merely a circumstance.
It is not uncommon to equate the rich with the love of money. Many would also agree that Christians should not pursue, or even desire, riches — and that anyone who does is a lover of money.
While the above is often true, this obscures Mammon’s true power. Such a simplistic view in respect of money masks the ‘unclear and present danger’ that has ruined the lives of many, including God-fearing believers.
How Love of Money Keeps its Victims Poor
As long as people focus all their attention on the love of money that longs for riches, they will never spot the love of money that keeps them locked in poverty and constant financial struggle.
Anyone who finds themselves trapped in this cycle has, in all likelihood, failed to recognize a key truth; that the love of money is a state of heart and a state of mind. The gain, or loss, of riches is merely a direction of travel.
The love of money is a state of heart and a state of mind. The gain, or loss, of riches is merely a direction of travel.
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
This is an important truth to grasp. As long as we fail to apprehend this truth, we forever:
- Relegate ourselves to a life of financial struggle.
- Fool ourselves into believing that we have rooted out the love of money by ‘not pursuing riches’ when, in fact, the love of money is alive and well in our hearts.
- Ensure that Mammon’s power over us continues to keep us in a place of lack — of both time, and money
A Life of Financial Struggle
The sad truth is that many people, including Christians, who eschew the pursuit of riches will spend their entire income on mundane middle-class pursuits. These include take-out meals, restaurants and entertainment in the form of films, books, games and hobbies. Or fashion, jewelry, golf and club memberships.
They accept that they will never own a a luxury yacht, or a private jet but they will ensure that they have the latest iPhone, Games Console, and 4K TV, all bought on credit.
They make their peace with the fact that they will never own a $300,000 Lamborghini— but they will take on crippling consumer debt to buy a $40,000 car for which they can barely afford the monthly payments.
These hard-working folk know they will never own a beach-front mansion or a $30M Manhattan Penthouse but they will stretch their mortgage to breaking point in order to buy that home with the extra bedroom, bigger garden, or swimming pool that they so desperately want.
As the expenses and interest payments mount, these families find themselves living from pay-check to pay-check, often using their credit cards to buy food for the month. They flounder and battle to keep their heads above water just until their year-end bonus finally comes through and gives them the breathing room they so desperately need. One moment of bliss in which they are able to come up for air… just in time for Christmas.
Small wonder that people in such a predicament don’t believe money has any power over them. ‘How could it?’ they think. ‘We never hold on to the stuff long enough to develop any taste for it.’
In truth, it is this materialistic love of money that keeps these families in financial bondage. The only problem is that the love of money, in this particular form, keeps its victims in a perpetual state of serfdom rather than making them rich. It is the ‘unclear and present danger’ that hides its true nature in the fact that, no matter how much money they earn, its victims always feel poor.
Can I truly say I am free from the love of money while I spend 40-60 hours each week in pursuit of my paycheck?
Rich Abba, Holy Abba
Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready; after that, build your house.
Proverbs 24:27
Proverbs has a lot of wisdom to offer on a myriad of subjects. Many proverbs focus on our spiritual condition while others deal with the practical aspects of day-to-day living.
Proverbs 24:27 is more practical. It does not focus on our relationship with God or the people around us. Nor does it address any particular area of sin in the human heart. Instead, this verse simply offers some sound financial advice in the Bible which, if heeded, will undoubtedly make life far less stressful this side of heaven.
Maybe it is this lack of spiritual emphasis that makes our church leaders skirt around or even shy away from such verses. This is a pity as these pragmatic proverbs are just as much part of the Bible as, say John 3:16 which is undoubtedly one of the most often-quoted verses in Christendom.
Yes, I acknowledge that Proverbs 24:27 may not carry the deep spiritual weight of Jesus’ words in John 3:16… but it is still in the Bible. Clearly, God put this verse there for a reason. It may not affect our salvation directly but it offers wise instruction on how we should live.
At the very least, we should acknowledge that God has taken the time to put this financial advice in the Bible and help us make wise life-choices rather than poor ones.
So what does the verse actually say?
Financial Advice in the Bible
In a nutshell, it instructs us to put our assets to work (i.e. make our money work for us) before we invest in our creature-comforts.
To understand this, we first need to understand what “fields” were to God’s people in Bible times. The short answer is, fields were assets. Land was an asset in Biblical times, just as property and land are today. Of course, we have many more asset classes in our modern economy including:
- Commodities
- Equities
- Bonds
- … etc.
In Bible times it was land and livestock.
So how should this inform our decisions in the modern economy?
Let us look at this, fairly common, middle-class story in today’s world and hold it up against God’s financial advice in the Bible.
How Modern Spending Patterns Ignore Biblical Advice
Jeff and Sarah married and soon discovered they had a bundle of extra cash now that they only had one rent to pay. Having previously each rented their own apartment, they had been paying two rents between them but, as they were now married, this was no longer the case.
Here was an opportunity for them to follow the financial advice in the Bible and buy an income-producing asset; their ‘field’. However, Jeff and Sarah disregarded the wisdom in Proverbs 24:27.
They built their house…
With the extra income, they pooled their combined savings and purchased a nice house which was bigger than either of their previous apartments had been.
It was a stretch but they both had good jobs and, as their income grew, the monthly payments became easier. Within a few years, Jeff and Sarah were expecting their first child. Having progressed in their careers and now earning more money than they had when starting out, they figured a bigger house would be in order – especially in light of their impending new arrival.
Within a few months, they sold their home and used the profit, along with their higher income, to purchase a bigger home in a nice suburb where they could raise a family.
A few years later, they were expecting their second child. While they had three bedrooms, they now began to realize that their garden was really quite small even for their three-year-old. Imagine having to cope with two children in such a small garden?
Fortunately, Jeff had recently received a big promotion at work. The accompanying salary increase meant they could consider buying a bigger home. So they traded up once more, as before. The new home was lovely, and spacious. Most of all, it had a massive garden that the kids could enjoy as they grew older.
However, within two years, Jeff received another major promotion. While great news for the family, it meant that they would have to move halfway across the state, to a much bigger city, where the company’s head-office was located.
Of course, the family did not want to down-size but equivalent accommodation was far more expensive in the big city. No matter. They used Jeff’s increase, stretched themselves financially, and found a similar home in an outlying suburb not too far from the company’s head-office.
Within a few years, Jeff was earning even more money and the family decided to build a small apartment above the garage. This meant that they had extra accommodation when their parents came to visit. They remortgaged their home to pay for the alterations.
When the next increase came, they used it to remortgage again and this time, they built a swimming pool.
Sadly, a year after their youngest child started college, the economy took a down-turn. Jeff lost his job and, unable to find other work, he was no longer able to make his hefty mortgage payments. With no other options available to them, they were forced to sell the family home.
The problem was that, in the current economic climate, Jeff and Sarah actually owed more than the house was worth. House-prices had dropped, which meant that, after settling their mortgage and the agent’s commission, there was still a balance outstanding on their mortgage.
They used Jeff’s redundancy package to pay off the balance and moved to a small town across state where rents were cheaper. He and Sarah struggled for a time, finding odd jobs here and there until the economy recovered. Unfortunately, this happened too late for Jeff’s career as he was now approaching retirement age and found employment increasingly hard to come by.
He eventually took a low-paying job at a local family-owned grocery store and slowly worked his way up to assistant manager. It was hard work as the store was open seven days a week. This meant long hours, often in evenings and over weekends.
He and Sarah eventually settled into a small rented apartment. Jeff’s pension helped towards the rent but both he and Sarah were forced to continue working long after reaching retirement age.
At eighty-two, Jeff was finally forced to stop working due to ill health. He and Sarah lived frugally on the small income she earned working at the local library along with the limited support they received from their children.
In short, Jeff and Sarah worked hard their entire lives and died poor.
Were Jeff and Sarah’s choices so wrong? Not really. They were an upright, hard-working couple just trying to do the best for themselves and their children. They were not filled with avarice or taking advantage of others in order to enrich themselves.
The only thing we could accuse them of is a lack of planning and some rotten luck.
How different might their life have been if they had followed the financial advice in the Bible? Put your outdoor work in order and get your fields ready; after that, build your house.
This would have generated additional streams of income for them so that, when disaster struck, they would have been better equipped to weather the storm. Had they only followed this financial advice in the Bible, their ‘fields’ would have continued to sustain them through their adversity.
More than three billion people across the globe live on less than $2.50/day – and over 80% of the world’s population lives on less than $10.00/day.
By those standards, anyone living a first world lifestyle is, by definition, rich. When measured against the above statistics, even the US federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour seems wealthy beyond imagination.
And yet, many first-world Christians – people who are rich in Christ – still feel poor. Instead of being free to “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,” millions of hard-working believers are trapped in a never-ending cycle of bills and financial struggle – even bondage – and are forced to work 40-60 hours a week just to make ends meet.
Instead of being able to give generously to God’s kingdom, many Christians face the fear of mounting bills and crippling debt. They may be rich in Christ but they certainly don’t feel that way.
This is not God’s plan for any believer. Wouldn’t it be great if every believer, currently locked in financial struggle, had the freedom to choose the hours they work? Or the freedom to choose where in the world they earned their living?
Consider, for a moment, how the apostle Paul was able to move and work freely throughout the Roman world, spreading the gospel far and wide among communities that would otherwise never have heard the good news. Paul did this as a Tent-Maker; earning money as he traveled. This supported him to the extent that he had plenty of time to minister in cities throughout the empire.
What would you do for God and his kingdom – if you only had the time? How would you live if you truly had the freedom to choose God’s purposes for your life, instead of being forced to commute to and from the office each day just to make ends meet?
The first step towards achieving this freedom is understanding what the Bible really says about managing our money. As with all aspects of our lives, the answer is found God’s word – and it is simple. Really.