And then, wiring up a large hydraulic press’s control system, a misconnection fried a $5000 control module which I had to replace. Looking back, I see the damage was a warning to me from God that I wasn’t following God’s will. But God sent me a $5,000 check from a friend investing in the business that very same day.
A week later, continuing to work, I received a flash burn on my right hand as the 480 Volt, 600 Amp service arced between the phases. This put me in the hospital for the weekend. There were pieces of metal embedded in my glasses, my hair was crispy, my upper arm was painfully red, my wrist had blisters on it, and my fingers were burnt grey like elephant hide.
Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16
But God is good, and the surgeon did good work removing the dead flesh. The physical therapist was wise and I followed his very painful instructions. For you see, after the operation, Saundra asked the surgeon how well I might recover, and he said, “Well, he’ll probably never play the piano…” Yet every Sunday I play the piano in a church service. God is good!
Because of this injury, I chose not to do anymore electrical wiring. In fact, that September, I purchased two books and developed a website, which was written in HTML code on Notepad, a program that has been built into every Windows PC since before there was Windows. A friend donated a modem to us. And that website eventually took us to a three-quarters of a million dollars in annual sales at a great profit margin as we sold inkjet ink by the pint bottle over the web. But it wouldn’t have happened if God hadn’t fried my hand.
Exodus 16:2-15; Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45; Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16
But God is good, and the surgeon did good work removing the dead flesh. The physical therapist was wise and I followed his very painful instructions. For you see, after the operation, Saundra asked the surgeon how well I might recover, and he said, “Well, he’ll probably never play the piano…” Yet every Sunday I play the piano in a church service. God is good!
Because of this injury, I chose not to do anymore electrical wiring. In fact, that September, I purchased two books and developed a website, which was written in HTML code on Notepad, a program that has been built into every Windows PC since before there was Windows. A friend donated a modem to us. And that website eventually took us to a three-quarters of a million dollars in annual sales at a great profit margin as we sold inkjet ink by the pint bottle over the web. But it wouldn’t have happened if God hadn’t fried my hand.
One of the stages of our lives is the stage of earning money. In our normal flow of life, after we learn, after we go to high school and college, we earn money. Most people trade the hours of their lives for money. We earn money – and with that money we earn, we purchase the necessary things of life - water, food, clothing, shelter – and we purchase the luxuries that make life easier and more secure – a car, a smart phone, furniture, soft pillows, hot water, restaurant food, dishwashers, and televisions. We purchase entertainment like cable television, movies, books, travel, and games. We buy tools that help us to earn more money or not to spend money so quickly, like pickups, drill presses, saws, computers, office buildings, or art supplies.
And so, in the modern world, our life settles down for 40 or 50 years of earning money which flows to other people. And we save money for the life stage after we earn by putting money into pensions, 401K’s, IRA’s, life insurance, mutual funds, and savings accounts. We pay off our mortgages so we won’t have that expense when we get old.
Judging from the commercials on television, earning money and saving money and spending money is everything in life. As Ted Turner, the founder of Superstation WTBS once said, “Life’s a game. Money is how we keep score.”
But when we look at the Word of God, we see a different view of money. We see a different view of this life stage we are calling our “earning years”.
In our reading from Exodus, the first reading, six hundred thousand Israelites have left Egypt and are out in the desert. And, you know what? Water isn’t normally found in the desert. But God led Moses and the people to a place with twelve springs called Elim.
But there’s something else about the desert. Because water is rare, you don’t find much livestock or the grass that the livestock needs. And bread is made from ground wheat, and wheat is simply another type of grass. You don’t find wheat in the desert or other grains, and so the people of Israel looked around and said, “There’s no food! There’s no meat and there’s no bread! We used to buy them at the grocery store! We wish we were back in Egypt as slaves because we had food to eat there!”
And so God and Moses and Aaron had a talk. God said, “I’m going to give them a test and see if they will listen to me.”
And God said that he would send them meat in the evening and bread in the morning.
How do you get your food? Who provides you with your food? Is it the grocery store, with the money you earned through your work? Or is there something deeper here, something more fundamental? The people of Israel learned that God does not need a marketplace to provide people with food.
Quail, those little chickens you can buy for $8 a pound at Kroger…Quail covered the camp in the evening, and you can bet that some of the smarter Israelites quickly figured out how to catch and cook those quail. Quail wings, quail legs, quail breasts, quail thighs - Israel ate well that evening. And so there was meat in the evening.
And in the morning, there was dew, but when the dew evaporated, there were little flakes covering the ground. And everybody said, “What is it?” In the language of the time, “Man hu?”, literally means, “what is?” Manna.
And Moses said, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.”
Did the people of Israel earn this manna? No. Not at all. Were they being particularly good? No – they were complaining! Yet God gave them what they needed. God gave them the bread. God gave them the quail. And soon, God would miraculously give them water.
God gave Saundra and I the sales from our ink business. We put up the website and the money came pouring in like manna from heaven. We worked hard, but we didn’t work nearly as hard as we had worked when we were selling the automation equipment. We began to pay off debts. We were able to spend more time with the children and get more involved in our church. God provides.
Jesus also has something to say about earning money. He tells the parable of the man who needed work done in his vineyard, so one morning very early he went to the marketplace and found the day laborers and hired them for the day, telling them he’d pay them a denarius, a normal day’s wages, about $100 in today’s money.
After he set them to working on the vines, he went back the marketplace around nine o’clock, and there were some more men standing around, so he hired them and told them he’d pay them what was right, and they began to work. And the owner went back at noon and at 3 pm and hired more workers. Finally, about 5 in the evening, he went back and found a few more standing around and hired them to work until dark.
When sunset came, he had the workers line up, with the short time workers first, and those who had worked all day last. And he paid everyone a denarius. Everybody got a hundred dollars.
Now, of course, this upset the guys who had worked all day. Why were they getting the same pay as the guys who had only worked an hour or two? Shouldn’t they get 4 or 8 times as much money? If you’ll pay a man $100 for one hour of work, shouldn’t you pay someone $1000 or $1200 for a twelve hour day?
The owner said, “I think you’re just jealous. You agreed to work for a denarius, a hundred dollars, didn’t you? What are you complaining about? It’s my money and I have the right to be generous."
When we work, we usually choose lines of work. Some of us choose to be doctors, some choose to be oilfield workers, some choose to work in retail and others choose to be stay-at-home mothers, skipping college perhaps, and going straight to the family stage. These are decisions we all make.
Sometimes God steps in and pushes us in one direction or the other, but usually we have made decisions that started us down the path. We didn’t like classrooms, so we got a job delivering goods to an oil platform. We fell in love early, so we married and had to get whatever job was available. We liked working alone and were good at math, so we eventually moved into accounting. We loved children, so we became a teacher. Our uncle told us great stories of his time in the Army, so we volunteered for the Army.
And yet…like the workers that started at the beginning of the day, when we get older we feel somehow cheated. We are close to retirement and a young man of twenty-eight years of age is hired to be our manager and we know he’s being paid twice what we are paid. After working twenty years at a coal mine we are laid off. We see an NFL player paid $8 million and that bothers us. It bothers us when someone makes more money than we do. And somehow, we think that we somehow set our pay scale and then we earn our wages. And the reality is…..Yes and no.
Yes, we are to earn our living by the sweat of our brow, as God told Adam when we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
But it is easy to buy into Ted Turner’s idea of money being the way we keep score in life. For life is not about how much we earn in this life, but about the rewards we receive in the life to come. If life is like a game of golf, then God is actively moving the holes and the sand traps and water hazards to individually challenge each of us, to make us the best golfers we can be.
For, you see, happiness in this life depends upon knowing that you are doing something worthwhile. If you believe deep in your heart that earning money so you can have nice cars, a nice home, and nice furniture is the key to happiness…it will be for you…as long as you are earning that money. But what happens when you can’t earn that money? What happens when you lose your job?
I have a friend who was happy as long as her 401k account was increasing each month. She had paid off her cars, she had paid off her home, she had money saved for her children’s education, she had a huge sum of money in her account for retirement, enough that she could live just as she had been living for twenty, thirty, or forty years without cutting back or earning anything more….yet when she was laid off from hers supposedly secure job, she was deeply disturbed and unhappy. You see, that 401k account had become the measure of who she was and her value. She decided her worth and value by the growth of that 401k account.
Our God is a jealous God. He does not want the worship of anything else – including our earning power. And He has the power and ability and desire to shut down any business that has become an idol for its owners or employees. Do you depend upon your pension fund? Or worse, do you worship that fund?
Like the vineyard owner, God gives to each of us what God chooses to give to each of us. We are to earn money through work, yes. But we also must understand that God controls all the money of the world. God alone chooses what to pay us.
In his sermon number fifty, “On the Use of Money”, John Wesley wrote:
I. We ought to gain all we can gain but this it is certain we ought not to do; we ought not to gain money at the expense of life, nor at the expense of our health.
He said that we should not hurt our physical health nor our mental or spiritual health through our earning. Life is more important than gold. We shouldn’t work in poison, in physically harmful occupations because they harm our physical health. A man who cons others is harming his spiritual health. Are you hurting or helping your neighbors with your work?
Consider Sam Walton, the man who founded Wal-Mart. You may not shop at Wal-Mart, but Sam, a Presbyterian deacon, always had his focus to learn how to sell products to many people at a cost lower than anyone else, for this would help everybody who bought from him. Others may choose to shop at boutiques, but those who shop at Wal-Mart shop there because the products are reasonably quality at very low prices. And Sam grew wealthy because of all the people he helped. And Sam never forced anyone to work for him. He simply developed a way of selling things so efficiently that people chose to buy from him and other people chose to work for him. By all accounts, Sam's spiritual health was wonderful - humble, friendly, concerned about others to the day he died.
On the other hand, consider the men who have laws changed so only their products can be sold or only their stores can operate. Consider the companies that push law changes so everybody has to purchase their product. For example, every car made today must have a backup camera. It’s the law. Even if you don’t want to pay for one, every car comes with one, with the price built-in. And in the past, we’ve seen this happen with all sorts of safety-related products – seatbelts, airbags, car seats for older and older children.
Did you know that Chrysler once produced a built-in “pop-up” car seat for a minivan? The law was quickly changed to make these built-in seats illegal so we’d have to buy separate car seats from the car seat makers.
Consider also the company towns where the only employer was the company and the company-owned store. These people risk their spiritual health for they harm others through their practices while only enriching themselves and harming their customers.
Does your business help people or is it an elaborate method to con people out of their money?
Do not hurt your health – physical, mental, or spiritual- because of your work. And do not hurt your neighbor’s health because of your work.
II. Do not throw the precious talent into the sea.
If you have the ability to design solutions to worldly problems, do so. If you have great talents, use them. If you can sway people for God through your words, do so. If you can sing people to Christ, then sing. If you can move people through your arts and crafts, then use your arts and crafts. If you can write, write. If you can make beauty in a garden which glorifies God, garden. If you have a talent for listening to people and helping them see good in this life, listen! Don’t throw your talents into the sea where they will sink down, unused.
III. Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly saved all you can, Then "give all you can."
John Wesley encouraged his followers to earn and gain wealth. He encouraged them to save their money. And then, he encouraged people to give their money generously, both to the church for the church to spend wisely, but also directly to people in need. And so, over the centuries, Methodists began Goodwill Industries, and Methodists started the Salvation Army. Today, Methodists give to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which is currently helping people in Houston, in Florida, in Puerto Rico recover from the hurricanes.
Earning money isn’t a sin. Worshipping money, loving money, holding onto money….there are the sins. Andrew Carnegie earned a billion dollars – and then he gave it away, largely by building public libraries throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia and New York.
Bill Gates earned $80 billion. And now he gives away $4 billion a year for healthcare research for developing countries.
We could do something too. I’ve noticed something recently. Many people end up in the hospital and in the hurry to get there, they left behind their phone chargers. Perhaps someone would like to take on the project of providing each floor at UHC with about 30 phone chargers, each labeled “Courtesy of _________ Church”. About 200 chargers altogether, a cost of about $1000.
Most of you know that churches in America are funded by the donations of the people who attend those churches. Your donations pay for the heating, the cooling and the maintenance of this building. Your donations pay my salary and insurance and pension and car mileage when I visit you at the hospital. Your donations pay for the bulletins you have in front of you, the curriculum used in our Sunday school classes, the Bibles we give children, and anything else we use to bring people to Christ and teach them, including money we give directly to people who need a bit of a help. And your donations, along with the donations of the other Methodist churches, pay for district superintendents, for clergy training, for youth events, for missionaries around the world, and for subsidies to the poorest churches so people who don’t have jobs can still hear the Word of God preached. Special donations go for flood cleanup kits in Houston and Miami and Farmington, for water bottles in Puerto Rico, for food in Haiti.
Like most women, my wife Saundra likes to decorate our home with beautiful things. But a few years ago, she suddenly came to the understanding that at some point, enough work has been done, enough pictures have been hung, enough trinkets are sitting on shelves. At some point, the money spent on these things is money that could have gone to support a food pantry, a missionary, a Clarksburg mission. Have you reached that point in your life? Have you reached the point where you are no longer struggling, but are comfortable? Are there enough toys for the kids, enough clothing for work, enough pairs of shoes, enough pieces of furniture, enough songs on the iPhone?
I've been to a lot of funerals recently. And I've never yet seen a Uhaul behind the hearse, taking all of the deceased's stuff with them. I've never seen a person's stuff come to see them at the visitation. I've never seen stuff shed a tear for the deceased.
And so, in the modern world, our life settles down for 40 or 50 years of earning money which flows to other people. And we save money for the life stage after we earn by putting money into pensions, 401K’s, IRA’s, life insurance, mutual funds, and savings accounts. We pay off our mortgages so we won’t have that expense when we get old.
Judging from the commercials on television, earning money and saving money and spending money is everything in life. As Ted Turner, the founder of Superstation WTBS once said, “Life’s a game. Money is how we keep score.”
But when we look at the Word of God, we see a different view of money. We see a different view of this life stage we are calling our “earning years”.
In our reading from Exodus, the first reading, six hundred thousand Israelites have left Egypt and are out in the desert. And, you know what? Water isn’t normally found in the desert. But God led Moses and the people to a place with twelve springs called Elim.
But there’s something else about the desert. Because water is rare, you don’t find much livestock or the grass that the livestock needs. And bread is made from ground wheat, and wheat is simply another type of grass. You don’t find wheat in the desert or other grains, and so the people of Israel looked around and said, “There’s no food! There’s no meat and there’s no bread! We used to buy them at the grocery store! We wish we were back in Egypt as slaves because we had food to eat there!”
And so God and Moses and Aaron had a talk. God said, “I’m going to give them a test and see if they will listen to me.”
And God said that he would send them meat in the evening and bread in the morning.
How do you get your food? Who provides you with your food? Is it the grocery store, with the money you earned through your work? Or is there something deeper here, something more fundamental? The people of Israel learned that God does not need a marketplace to provide people with food.
Quail, those little chickens you can buy for $8 a pound at Kroger…Quail covered the camp in the evening, and you can bet that some of the smarter Israelites quickly figured out how to catch and cook those quail. Quail wings, quail legs, quail breasts, quail thighs - Israel ate well that evening. And so there was meat in the evening.
And in the morning, there was dew, but when the dew evaporated, there were little flakes covering the ground. And everybody said, “What is it?” In the language of the time, “Man hu?”, literally means, “what is?” Manna.
And Moses said, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.”
Did the people of Israel earn this manna? No. Not at all. Were they being particularly good? No – they were complaining! Yet God gave them what they needed. God gave them the bread. God gave them the quail. And soon, God would miraculously give them water.
God gave Saundra and I the sales from our ink business. We put up the website and the money came pouring in like manna from heaven. We worked hard, but we didn’t work nearly as hard as we had worked when we were selling the automation equipment. We began to pay off debts. We were able to spend more time with the children and get more involved in our church. God provides.
Jesus also has something to say about earning money. He tells the parable of the man who needed work done in his vineyard, so one morning very early he went to the marketplace and found the day laborers and hired them for the day, telling them he’d pay them a denarius, a normal day’s wages, about $100 in today’s money.
After he set them to working on the vines, he went back the marketplace around nine o’clock, and there were some more men standing around, so he hired them and told them he’d pay them what was right, and they began to work. And the owner went back at noon and at 3 pm and hired more workers. Finally, about 5 in the evening, he went back and found a few more standing around and hired them to work until dark.
When sunset came, he had the workers line up, with the short time workers first, and those who had worked all day last. And he paid everyone a denarius. Everybody got a hundred dollars.
Now, of course, this upset the guys who had worked all day. Why were they getting the same pay as the guys who had only worked an hour or two? Shouldn’t they get 4 or 8 times as much money? If you’ll pay a man $100 for one hour of work, shouldn’t you pay someone $1000 or $1200 for a twelve hour day?
The owner said, “I think you’re just jealous. You agreed to work for a denarius, a hundred dollars, didn’t you? What are you complaining about? It’s my money and I have the right to be generous."
When we work, we usually choose lines of work. Some of us choose to be doctors, some choose to be oilfield workers, some choose to work in retail and others choose to be stay-at-home mothers, skipping college perhaps, and going straight to the family stage. These are decisions we all make.
Sometimes God steps in and pushes us in one direction or the other, but usually we have made decisions that started us down the path. We didn’t like classrooms, so we got a job delivering goods to an oil platform. We fell in love early, so we married and had to get whatever job was available. We liked working alone and were good at math, so we eventually moved into accounting. We loved children, so we became a teacher. Our uncle told us great stories of his time in the Army, so we volunteered for the Army.
And yet…like the workers that started at the beginning of the day, when we get older we feel somehow cheated. We are close to retirement and a young man of twenty-eight years of age is hired to be our manager and we know he’s being paid twice what we are paid. After working twenty years at a coal mine we are laid off. We see an NFL player paid $8 million and that bothers us. It bothers us when someone makes more money than we do. And somehow, we think that we somehow set our pay scale and then we earn our wages. And the reality is…..Yes and no.
Yes, we are to earn our living by the sweat of our brow, as God told Adam when we were kicked out of the Garden of Eden.
But it is easy to buy into Ted Turner’s idea of money being the way we keep score in life. For life is not about how much we earn in this life, but about the rewards we receive in the life to come. If life is like a game of golf, then God is actively moving the holes and the sand traps and water hazards to individually challenge each of us, to make us the best golfers we can be.
For, you see, happiness in this life depends upon knowing that you are doing something worthwhile. If you believe deep in your heart that earning money so you can have nice cars, a nice home, and nice furniture is the key to happiness…it will be for you…as long as you are earning that money. But what happens when you can’t earn that money? What happens when you lose your job?
I have a friend who was happy as long as her 401k account was increasing each month. She had paid off her cars, she had paid off her home, she had money saved for her children’s education, she had a huge sum of money in her account for retirement, enough that she could live just as she had been living for twenty, thirty, or forty years without cutting back or earning anything more….yet when she was laid off from hers supposedly secure job, she was deeply disturbed and unhappy. You see, that 401k account had become the measure of who she was and her value. She decided her worth and value by the growth of that 401k account.
Our God is a jealous God. He does not want the worship of anything else – including our earning power. And He has the power and ability and desire to shut down any business that has become an idol for its owners or employees. Do you depend upon your pension fund? Or worse, do you worship that fund?
Like the vineyard owner, God gives to each of us what God chooses to give to each of us. We are to earn money through work, yes. But we also must understand that God controls all the money of the world. God alone chooses what to pay us.
In his sermon number fifty, “On the Use of Money”, John Wesley wrote:
I. We ought to gain all we can gain but this it is certain we ought not to do; we ought not to gain money at the expense of life, nor at the expense of our health.
He said that we should not hurt our physical health nor our mental or spiritual health through our earning. Life is more important than gold. We shouldn’t work in poison, in physically harmful occupations because they harm our physical health. A man who cons others is harming his spiritual health. Are you hurting or helping your neighbors with your work?
Consider Sam Walton, the man who founded Wal-Mart. You may not shop at Wal-Mart, but Sam, a Presbyterian deacon, always had his focus to learn how to sell products to many people at a cost lower than anyone else, for this would help everybody who bought from him. Others may choose to shop at boutiques, but those who shop at Wal-Mart shop there because the products are reasonably quality at very low prices. And Sam grew wealthy because of all the people he helped. And Sam never forced anyone to work for him. He simply developed a way of selling things so efficiently that people chose to buy from him and other people chose to work for him. By all accounts, Sam's spiritual health was wonderful - humble, friendly, concerned about others to the day he died.
On the other hand, consider the men who have laws changed so only their products can be sold or only their stores can operate. Consider the companies that push law changes so everybody has to purchase their product. For example, every car made today must have a backup camera. It’s the law. Even if you don’t want to pay for one, every car comes with one, with the price built-in. And in the past, we’ve seen this happen with all sorts of safety-related products – seatbelts, airbags, car seats for older and older children.
Did you know that Chrysler once produced a built-in “pop-up” car seat for a minivan? The law was quickly changed to make these built-in seats illegal so we’d have to buy separate car seats from the car seat makers.
Consider also the company towns where the only employer was the company and the company-owned store. These people risk their spiritual health for they harm others through their practices while only enriching themselves and harming their customers.
Does your business help people or is it an elaborate method to con people out of their money?
Do not hurt your health – physical, mental, or spiritual- because of your work. And do not hurt your neighbor’s health because of your work.
II. Do not throw the precious talent into the sea.
If you have the ability to design solutions to worldly problems, do so. If you have great talents, use them. If you can sway people for God through your words, do so. If you can sing people to Christ, then sing. If you can move people through your arts and crafts, then use your arts and crafts. If you can write, write. If you can make beauty in a garden which glorifies God, garden. If you have a talent for listening to people and helping them see good in this life, listen! Don’t throw your talents into the sea where they will sink down, unused.
III. Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly saved all you can, Then "give all you can."
John Wesley encouraged his followers to earn and gain wealth. He encouraged them to save their money. And then, he encouraged people to give their money generously, both to the church for the church to spend wisely, but also directly to people in need. And so, over the centuries, Methodists began Goodwill Industries, and Methodists started the Salvation Army. Today, Methodists give to the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which is currently helping people in Houston, in Florida, in Puerto Rico recover from the hurricanes.
Earning money isn’t a sin. Worshipping money, loving money, holding onto money….there are the sins. Andrew Carnegie earned a billion dollars – and then he gave it away, largely by building public libraries throughout Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia and New York.
Bill Gates earned $80 billion. And now he gives away $4 billion a year for healthcare research for developing countries.
We could do something too. I’ve noticed something recently. Many people end up in the hospital and in the hurry to get there, they left behind their phone chargers. Perhaps someone would like to take on the project of providing each floor at UHC with about 30 phone chargers, each labeled “Courtesy of _________ Church”. About 200 chargers altogether, a cost of about $1000.
Most of you know that churches in America are funded by the donations of the people who attend those churches. Your donations pay for the heating, the cooling and the maintenance of this building. Your donations pay my salary and insurance and pension and car mileage when I visit you at the hospital. Your donations pay for the bulletins you have in front of you, the curriculum used in our Sunday school classes, the Bibles we give children, and anything else we use to bring people to Christ and teach them, including money we give directly to people who need a bit of a help. And your donations, along with the donations of the other Methodist churches, pay for district superintendents, for clergy training, for youth events, for missionaries around the world, and for subsidies to the poorest churches so people who don’t have jobs can still hear the Word of God preached. Special donations go for flood cleanup kits in Houston and Miami and Farmington, for water bottles in Puerto Rico, for food in Haiti.
Like most women, my wife Saundra likes to decorate our home with beautiful things. But a few years ago, she suddenly came to the understanding that at some point, enough work has been done, enough pictures have been hung, enough trinkets are sitting on shelves. At some point, the money spent on these things is money that could have gone to support a food pantry, a missionary, a Clarksburg mission. Have you reached that point in your life? Have you reached the point where you are no longer struggling, but are comfortable? Are there enough toys for the kids, enough clothing for work, enough pairs of shoes, enough pieces of furniture, enough songs on the iPhone?
I've been to a lot of funerals recently. And I've never yet seen a Uhaul behind the hearse, taking all of the deceased's stuff with them. I've never seen a person's stuff come to see them at the visitation. I've never seen stuff shed a tear for the deceased.
Think about whether or not you have enough stuff...
If so, think long-term about what you will do with what God allows you to earn. Could you give more to the church, to a mission, to a charity? Could you start a brand new mission project? Could you buy a life insurance policy which benefits the church or a charity – not a building, not dead stone and bricks and wood, but people who benefit because you have funded an outreach festival, a DVD that explains the Gospel, a video game that leads children to Jesus, the recording of sermons to put on the Internet or on the radio? Could you take the money God has allowed you to earn and move to another country where you’d lead people to Christ? Could you help fund a week of revival at a park? Could you put a hundred dollar bill each month in the grocery bag of some different struggling young mother? Could you give a $20 tip to your tired waitress or your young auto parts salesman for his family?
We earn money only because God is generous and allows us to earn those funds using talents that God has given us. Without God supporting us, we would have no ability to earn, no ability to spend, no ability to even live. We need God to give us even the basics – even when we think we are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
And so, when we are in the earning stage of life, our task is to unapologetically earn money that we turn around and give where the needs are in this world. It is a stage of life that we find ourselves in from time to time.
There was a young man who earned his first paycheck - $200. He took the check to the bank and then began to walk home. He set aside in his pocket $20 for his church. And he thought about the video game he would buy, that he would buy over the internet when he got home.
If so, think long-term about what you will do with what God allows you to earn. Could you give more to the church, to a mission, to a charity? Could you start a brand new mission project? Could you buy a life insurance policy which benefits the church or a charity – not a building, not dead stone and bricks and wood, but people who benefit because you have funded an outreach festival, a DVD that explains the Gospel, a video game that leads children to Jesus, the recording of sermons to put on the Internet or on the radio? Could you take the money God has allowed you to earn and move to another country where you’d lead people to Christ? Could you help fund a week of revival at a park? Could you put a hundred dollar bill each month in the grocery bag of some different struggling young mother? Could you give a $20 tip to your tired waitress or your young auto parts salesman for his family?
We earn money only because God is generous and allows us to earn those funds using talents that God has given us. Without God supporting us, we would have no ability to earn, no ability to spend, no ability to even live. We need God to give us even the basics – even when we think we are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
And so, when we are in the earning stage of life, our task is to unapologetically earn money that we turn around and give where the needs are in this world. It is a stage of life that we find ourselves in from time to time.
There was a young man who earned his first paycheck - $200. He took the check to the bank and then began to walk home. He set aside in his pocket $20 for his church. And he thought about the video game he would buy, that he would buy over the internet when he got home.
But he saw a man sitting along the sidewalk with no shoes, so he bought a $40 pair of sneakers and gave them to the man.
Later, he saw a woman with a child begging for money, so he bought an $40 bag of groceries and gave it to the woman.
He got home and set aside $50 for his rent. He had just $50 left to buy a bag of groceries for the week. Nothing for the video game.
Just then, his mail was delivered. In the mail was $200 from his grandmother, a gift to help him with his new apartment.
So I ask you to sit quietly with God this afternoon, praying a two-way prayer with the Holy Spirit. Ask the Spirit: "How should I earn money? What should I do with that money? Where should I stop spending so that I can do more for God’s will?"
Listen for the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit to reply.
And then….act.
Amen.
Later, he saw a woman with a child begging for money, so he bought an $40 bag of groceries and gave it to the woman.
He got home and set aside $50 for his rent. He had just $50 left to buy a bag of groceries for the week. Nothing for the video game.
Just then, his mail was delivered. In the mail was $200 from his grandmother, a gift to help him with his new apartment.
So I ask you to sit quietly with God this afternoon, praying a two-way prayer with the Holy Spirit. Ask the Spirit: "How should I earn money? What should I do with that money? Where should I stop spending so that I can do more for God’s will?"
Listen for the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit to reply.
And then….act.
Amen.
