According to our attitude, wealth can be creative; it can be used to spread God’s Word, build hospitals and churches, feed the poor, or take care of orphans. Or it can be wasted, spent on frivolous activities, lavish living, gambling, or other foolish activity. Wealth also can be corruptive, used to purchase influence, bribes, illegal businesses, or guns and bombs.
For the Christian, wealth is that which God entrusts to each of us. From the world’s perspective, the creation on wealth evolves around many things, including self-will—how much self-control and will power one has to devote to earning money.
As we will see later, that is not God’s perspective because, in every instance, individuals who spend their lives in the pursuit of money end up frustrated and miserable. They never really understand why they have money, and as they get closer to death, they realize how futile the attaining of wealth was.
There is a lot of worldly folklore surrounding wealth. Some of it states:
1. It takes breaks to get ahead. Whoever gets the best breaks or has he most influence is “the guy who gets ahead.”
2. It takes money to make money. In other words, the rich get richer.
3. You can’t be too honest and get ahead today. Why? You must be willing to shade the truth. If you’re extremely honest with people, then you will not be able to deal with the world system.
None of these are God’s principles. They are nonsense put out by those who seek to rationalize their behavior. The creation of wealth is both a gift and a talent. For some, acquiring wealth is easier than it is for others. But it is possible for anyone who is willing to sacrifice and to achieve by setting and reaching goals.
I’m not suggesting that this is good, because as we will see in God’s plan, it’s attitude, not aptitude that He honors. The gaining of wealth as an end in itself is a very poor investment of a life. Because, first, it requires a great deal of time—to the virtual exclusion of everything else including family, friends, hobbies and relaxation.
Second, there is no correlation between wealth and happiness. That is an important key! Many Christians are inwardly disturbed by the prosperity of some non-Christians. Yet we should recognize that Satan is the prince of this world, and it would be an extremely poor recruiting practice if he recruited only the impoverished.
But there is a great difference between God and Satan in our finances. “It is the blessing of the Lord that makes rich, and He adds no sorrow to it”. This establishes the foundation for the remainder of our study—how to have wealth without worry (wealth being everything that we own: our money, our family our creative ability—everything we have acquired since we arrived and everything we must leave when we go).
Thus we should remember that money is temporary. The importance of money to God is that for this small sliver of time in which we are living. He wants to use it to help determine our usefulness to Him throughout eternity. Our commitment to God’s Word on this earth is proportional to our use of money.
Second Peter 3:11 says, “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness.