They provide demarcation, identification and protection. Basketball won’t be as fun if there are no demarcation lines. Maps won’t be helpful if you can’t identify where you are and where you’re heading. They also provide protection for if you are in a construction zone, they will keep you from falling into a ditch.
But there are lines that you can afford to cross. However, there are those that will cost you everything.
Crossing the outside lines of a basketball can only cost you a turnover. But crossing enemy lines during war can cost you your life.
1 Timothy 6:6 says that “godliness with content is great gain.”
There is a fine line between contentment and greed.
Experts tell us that an average person thinks about money 50% of his or her waking time – how to keep it, save it, spend it, invest it, take care of it.
Money is not evil in and of itself. In fact, Proverbs 8:21 says, “Those who love me inherit wealth. I will fill their treasuries.”
Wealth is as neutral as a knife. Knives are helpful in the kitchen and in the jungle. But when used to hurt or inflict bodily harm, that’s when it becomes dangerous.
Wealth is not related to how much we have; it’s related to whether we are content with what we have.
Here are a few ways we can determine if we the love of money which is the root off all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10) is creeping in:
1. When we spend more time thinking of how to get more money than how to do a better job at work.
When we are more consumed with getting more of it than doing a better job at work to give glory to God, then we run into major bumps.
2. When we feel that we never have enough.
Buying and spending are legit. We need food on the table, clothes on our back and roofs over our heads. But when it reaches to a point when we are always dissatisfied and our desires become insatiable, the love of money may be creeping in.
3. When we flaunt it.
Love for money creeps in when we get joy out of wearing, driving, living, showing what we have.
4. When we resent giving it.
All that we have is by the grace of God. Grace is getting what we don’t deserve. Therefore, all that is in our hands are really not ours. He owns them all. Giving to God is not giving but giving back. Giving back communicates that what we have is really not ours in the first place.
5. When we sin to obtain it.
Being dishonest on our Income Tax, manipulating numbers in our expense account, logging in the wrong numbers and taking advantage of other people’s ignorance are some of the indicators that the love of money is creeping in.
Paul tells Timothy to “take hold of the eternal life to which you were called” (1 Timothy 6:12). In effect, he is saying to not lose sight of the eternal perspective.
This life isn’t all that there is.
Jesus died on the cross to set us free from the world’s enslavement. Don’t go back there again. In fact, Paul reminds the church in Colossae to ‘set your hearts on things above not on earthly things’. Jesus has set us free. We are no longer bound by these.
Recently, we (Metro Manila pastors) had to prepare, review, revisit and recompute budgets for different ministry departments in the church for 2011. We have a board that reviews, checks, evaluates and keeps everything in line to make sure we adhere to the highest standards of integrity and biblical stewardship.