Tag Archives: trustworthy

MONEY – THE OVERFLOW OF THE HEART

Christian Life, ,

MONEY – THE OVERFLOW OF THE HEART

0 “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?
13 “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.” Luke 16:10-13

Money! Strange, isn’t it, that Jesus spoke more about money and possessions and His disciples’ attitude to them than He did about the subjects we would have thought important to Him as His followers – “spiritual” things like faith and love and prayer. Why did He have so much to say about money? I think He had a good idea about what drives the world and what controls the hearts of people, then. as it does now. Perhaps the problem is not so much money as the love of money which, said Paul, is the root of all kinds of evil.

As disciples of Jesus, we need to have the correct attitude towards our money which arises, first from what is central in our lives; either our love-relationship to God as our Father and the trust that flows from that love, or our doubts and fears about Him which cause us to trust the money we can see rather than the God we can’t see. We become pre-occupied with the things that the pagans run after when we are unsure about our heavenly Father’s trustworthiness towards us as His children.

Consider this chiasm to which we have already referred:

A   No one can serve two masters.

     B   Either he will hate the one and

           C   Love the other, or

           C’  He will be devoted to one and

     B’   Despise the other.           

A’  You cannot serve both God and Money.

(Matt. 6: 24).        

Either money or God will occupy our affection – not both and. Jesus was adamant. It’s not primarily about who or what we serve. It’s about who or what we love. We cannot –it is impossible to – serve God and money.  

Before we can consider the ramifications of our attitude towards money and the way we use it, we must get this one thing straight. Either we love God, or we don’t. Either we trust Him as our heavenly Father, or we don’t. There is no middle road. Our priority love for God or money will direct everything we do with the resources we have been given.

We also need to have the correct disposition. The part that money plays in our lives is determined by our basic disposition. The godless person is essentially selfish and self-serving. He does not recognise the goodness and grace of God in the world around him. He is self-absorbed and cannot see beyond the end of his nose.  His eyes look inward, not outward and he concentrates only on his own wants and needs. In Hebrew thought, this was called “the evil eye” which was diagnosed by its attitude towards money and possessions.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If, then, the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! (Matt. 6: 22-23)

Jesus has rescued us from the dominion (control) of selfishness and greed (darkness) and transferred us into the realm of God’s rule which is generous and full of mercy (the kingdom of light – Col. 1: 13-14). He has given us a new disposition – “the eye of light”.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come. (2 Cor. 5: 17)

The ”eye of light” can see beyond its own needs to the needs of others. It recognises God’s goodness in its own life and participates in His goodness by sharing it with others. It understands that to give is the way to enter the flow of God’s goodness. It builds and strengthens the disposition of light.

Jesus taught His disciples that God does not simply meet our needs when we ask Him. He has put in place a system which ensures that we show the world around us what He is like by being generous to others. God’s resources flow back to us when we use our resources to bless others.

Like our mouths, the way we handle our money is a mirror of our hearts.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

A True Son

Bible Study, , , ,

A TRUE SON 

“‘Who are you?’ they asked.’Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,’ Jesus replied.’I have much to say in judgment of you. But He who sent me is trustworthy, and what I heard from Him I tell the world.’ They did not understand that He was telling them about the Father. So Jesus said, ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. The one who sent me is with me; He has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases Him.'” John 8:25-29 (NIV).

Another outrageous claim if it were not true! “I always do what pleases Him.”

This was the hallmark of the Son of God. He always did what pleased the Father. Have you ever wondered what that was? What do you think it is that pleases the Father more than anything? We can speculate and find many answers to this question. He was generous and merciful just like the Father — that would be a good answer and it would be true. He glorified that Father in everything He did — that would also be true.

But what is it that surpasses everything else that pleases the Father? To find the answer we have to go back to the beginning. At the beginning of human history God gave Adam one instruction in the Garden of Eden, ‘Leave that one tree alone.’ If that one tree was going to be an issue between man and God, Satan made sure that man would focus on it until it became so important to him that it would become the reason for their disobedience.

The history of God’s ancient people was a history of disobedience, focusing especially on God’s instruction, ‘Do not worship idols.’ They worshipped the idols of the surrounding nations until they became vile, like the thing they loved (Hosea 9:10). Disobedience took them to Babylon and eventually to crucifying their Messiah.

God had a different verdict on David, their model king, the man who followed their first king, Saul, who was rejected because of his disobedience. “After removing Saul, He made David their king. God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David, son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.'” Acts 13:22b (NIV).

Books have been written about David, the only man in the Bible of whom God said, ‘A man after my own heart’, giving many reasons for God’s approval, yet it is recorded plainly in the Word that God was pleased with him because ‘He will do everything I want him to do.’ David may have slipped up on more than one occasion but the drift of his life was that he ‘inquired of the Lord,’ and then followed through on God’s instruction.

Compare him with his predecessor, King Saul; Saul failed to carry out the two instructions we read about in Scripture.  Because of that God could not trust him to be the leader of His people. Saul had a dangerous self-consciousness that made him a people-pleaser and he disqualified himself from being the first of a dynasty of kings.

Jesus could claim, without a qualm, that He was the true Son of God. His obedience to the Father was absolute and unquestioning. Even in the Garden of Gethsemane, when He wrestled with the horror of the cross until the blood ran, He still submitted to the Father’s will and endured everything without resistance. “When they hurled their insults at Him, He did not retaliate; when He suffered, He made no threats. Instead He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly.” 1 Peter 2:23 (NIV).

Is it not true that God is more interested in our obedience than in our achievements? It is our obedience that makes our achievements of significance to God because obedience gets the job done. “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered and, once made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him…” Hebrews 5:8, 9, (NIV). Obedience is best learned by obeying!

Obedience presupposes that one knows what God’s requirements are and that presupposes that one spends time with the Father and in His Word. We have the pattern of the Son, perfect in every way. And we can’t say that of the Pharisees!

Don’t you also want to please the Father? Then find out what He wants of you and do it!

Stay With It

Christian Life, , ,

STAY WITH IT

“‘You’ll even be turned in by parents, brothers, relatives, friends. Some of you will be killed. There’s no telling who will hate you because of me. Even so, every detail of your body and soul — even the hairs of your head! — is in my care; nothing of you will be lost. Staying with it — that’s what is required. Stay with it to the end. You won’t be sorry, you’ll be saved.'” Luke 21:16-19 (The Message).

How terrible is that, that a parent will betray a child and siblings each other for the sake of an ideology that has no foundation in truth! Such is the power of deception that it even overrides family loyalties.

There are countless stories of these kinds of betrayals from the Communist era, for example, that ripped family and friends apart. There are devotees of other religions today that are equally ruthless in the name of their god and teach that anyone who is not one of them must be destroyed.

But, unlike the gods who ‘require’ this kind of behaviour to protect them, Jesus assured His followers that He was in charge and would protect them, even down to the hairs on their head! Herein lies the difference between lies and truth. If a god cannot take care of him and demands that his followers go on the rampage and riot and murder to guard his name, does he sound like the sort of god that attracts both trust and security?

What if you did something to annoy him? If he requires you to kill even your own family for him, what guarantee do you have that he won’t take you out for some infringement? How much security is there is a god who is capricious and unpredictable?

Once again, Jesus was utterly truthful. He faithfully warned His followers that there was trouble ahead for them if they remained loyal to Him. He gave no guarantee of physical safety if they followed Him but He did assure them that no part of them would be eternally lost. How many times have we already seen that He always viewed life from the perspective of eternity? Life did not end at the grave. It was only a part of the whole, a preparation for what lay ahead beyond death.

Persecution would not destroy them, however tough it was, but it would weed out those who were only in it for what they could get out of it. It would be part of a refining process by which faith in Him would be stripped of props and false expectations and would be anchored in His trustworthiness alone.

Jesus wanted His followers to trust Him so completely, in His character and His promises, that they would stake their very lives on what He had said. And they did! History reveals the story of many thousands during the first three centuries of the church who gave their lives rather than denies Jesus, and they did it joyfully because they believed His promises.

People foolishly follow the words of someone who claimed to speak for their god with no proof of their authenticity. Jesus Himself spoke these words, “‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?'” John 11:25-26 (NIV).

Once again we are left with a choice — to believe and follow the teachings of a god who never speaks for himself and who offers no infallible proof or his existence and has to rely on fallible humans to speak for him, or to believe in the one who said He would die and rise again and did it, not for Himself but for us, so that we can entrust ourselves to His proven trustworthiness.