Topics We Avoid - Money

Money is one of those things we don’t like to talk about. I wouldn’t ask you about your net worth and you wouldn’t ask me how much we owe on our house. But money is something we deal with virtually every day. We go to work to make it. We spend it at the grocery store. We spend lots of it at the gas station.

The more you think about it money, the less you understand it. The paper it's printed on isn't worth a red cent. If the government decided that leaves from trees were money so there would be more that enough for everybody, the leaves would be worthless just like they are now. Money has value only because the government declares that it has value and because people trust the government in that one particular although in many other particulars they wouldn't trust the government any farther than they could throw it. 

The value of money, like stocks and commodities, goes up and down for reasons experts can’t explain and at moments nobody can predict, so you can be a millionaire one moment and bankrupt the next. There is more concrete reality in a baby throwing her rattle out of the crib. People use up their entire lives making money so they can enjoy the lives they have entirely used up. It’s irony in her cruelest manifestation. 

• Those who love money will never have enough. You can never have enough of something you love. 
• Hoarding riches primarily harms the hoarder. 
• We all come to the end of our lives naked and empty-handed like the day we were born. 
• Life is to be enjoyed and an aim of life is to leave the world in a better place than how we received it. 
• True prosperity comes from God. 

Money can't buy love. It can't by the love of God or the love of people. Resources are necessary to live. Resources are a poor thing to live for, because in the end resources disappoint because we aren’t created to live in community with money and stuff and things. We are communicated to live in community with God and people. 

Something special happens the moment you dip into your treasure, however small or however vast it may or may not be, and you give away. What you are saying is something like: “God has blessed me. I love you or I love God or I love this movement more than I love this money. So, here it is.” Each week many of you say, “Here it is”, when you support our church financially. I am so grateful and thankful for your commitment. 

The best is yet to come… 

Craig