5 Money Matters
Money matters—there is just no getting around them. It is not unspiritual to think about them, to be concerned about them, or to talk of them often. In a significant way, your life will be shaped by what you think about money, and in a way that is inescapable, somehow, someway, your heart will struggle with money. Money is a big deal, but it’s even a bigger deal in a world that seems to have gone financially insane. Money is such a big deal that in Christ’s teaching ministry, it was one of his favorite and most important topics. Rather than avoiding money matters or talking about them with timidity, as many pastors do, Jesus talked about the topic all the time. You may not know it, but Jesus talked about money more than he talked about heaven. He talked about money more than he talked about hell. Of the thirty-nine parables recorded in the Gospels, eleven talk about money. Almost every page of the Gospel of Luke is dyed with this conversation.
This conversation about money is not just there in the ministry of Jesus but is a significant theme throughout all of Scripture. The biblical discussion of money tends to divide into two categories: the danger of money and the blessing of money. Hear the power of the warning in these passages about the dangers of money:
The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1 Tim. 6:10)
Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Luke 12:34)
set no vain hopes on robbery;
if riches increase, set not your heart on them. (Ps. 62:10)
He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity. (Eccles. 5:10)
Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. (1 Tim. 6:9)
Better is a little with righteousness
than great revenues with injustice. (Prov. 16:8)
Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Heb. 13:5)
Do not toil to acquire wealth;
be discerning enough to desist. (Prov. 23:4)
A faithful man will abound with blessings,
but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished. (Prov. 28:20)
The Bible also points us to the blessing that money can be. Here Scripture tends to emphasize the good that can be done with money and the way that money is a revealer of the heart:
A rich man’s wealth is his strong city;
the poverty of the poor is their ruin. (Prov. 10:15)
You shall give to him freely [the poor brother], and your heart shall not be grudging when you give to him, because for this the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. (Deut. 15:10)
Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need. (Mal. 3:10)
Honor the Lord with your wealth
and with the firstfruits of all your produce;
then your barns will be filled with plenty,
and your vats will be bursting with wine. (Prov. 3:9–10)
It is more blessed to give than to receive. (Acts 20:35)
The rich rules over the poor,
and the borrower is the slave of the lender. (Prov. 22:7)
One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? (Luke 16:10–11)
What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. . . . You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. (James 4:1–3)
Money is a powerful thing. On one hand, it can expose us to danger, while on the other hand it can be used of God to reveal the need of our hearts and, through us, to bless the lives of others. You and I will interact with money in some way. That interaction is one of the things that sets the direction of our lives. When it comes to money, Scripture leaves little room for comfortable neutrality.
Money will either bless you or curse you. It will be a tool in the hands of a God of grace, or it will be a doorway to bad and dangerous things. Like two sides of a physical coin, there are two spiritual sides to money. Each side calls to you. Each side holds before you a vision and promises. Each side asks not just for the investment of your money but for the allegiance of your heart. The battle between the two sides of the money coin wages in the heart of every person this side of eternity. Money is a danger. Money is a blessing. What will it be for you? Where the rubber meets the road in everyday life, you will answer the question not just once. No, you will have to answer it again and again as, day after day, you are greeted with false promises and truth, each voice telling you what to do with the money in your hand.
Your Lord talked about these issues so often, because he knows well the power and importance of money. He knows the significance of this heart battle. He knows we are easily seduced. When it comes to money, he knows how quickly we can lose our way. He knows that we are susceptible to giving the love of our hearts to money. And if we listen to our Lord, we know that this is a conversation we need to have.
So you walk with your money, no matter how much you have, down a pathway of danger or blessing. Very important things in your life are shaped by the pathway you take. To walk the pathway of blessing takes more than good theology and knowledge of biblical commands and principles. It takes powerful, rescuing grace. As we examine money as both a danger and a blessing, every word I have written springs from the knowledge that, when it comes to money, our hearts will rest contented only when they have been rescued by and are being protected by God’s amazing grace.
Four things work together to soften the heart for money problems. These four things set up the heart to do what must never be done with money: love it. (The love of money, what that means and what it does, will be the content of the next chapter). What things weaken the resolve of the heart and set it up for money difficulties? The first is ingratitude. A grateful heart is a heart at rest. A grateful person is aware that he deserves nothing of all he possesses and enjoys. Because of this, he daily counts his blessings and is thankful for the little things that would otherwise be taken for granted. The unthankful person does just the opposite. He keeps telling himself that he deserves more than he has. Because of this, he is way more aware of what he doesn’t yet have than of all the things he has been graciously given. This causes him to live an entitled and demanding life. Never quite satisfied, he easily justifies a wasteful and selfish use of money.
The second ingredient is need. This is one of the most poorly and overused words in human culture. The majority of what we are able to tell ourselves we need, we don’t actually need. We all are very skilled at loading our desires into our need category, and once we have, we think it’s our right to have these things, and therefore it’s appropriate to do what is necessary to possess them. So we waste all kinds of money satisfying needs that aren’t really needs, all the while feeling quite comfortable, because if it’s a need, it seems right to acquire it. So with closets bursting with more clothes than we can wear and refrigerators filled with more than we can eat and houses bigger than we actually occupy, we are still able to tell ourselves that we are needy. And because we have told ourselves that we are needy, we will spend more.
Along with ingratitude and need, there is a third thing that weakens the defenses of the heart against the love of money: discontentment. Because I am not grateful for all the things I have been given and don’t deserve, and because I have misdiagnosed need, loading many things in my need category that are not needs, I am a constantly discontented person. It is virtually impossible to be satisfied with what I have, so I am on a constant quest for more. Since I am on a constant quest for more, I tend to spend more than I should to satisfy myself, but because my discontentment is rooted in ingratitude and misunderstood need, spending more won’t solve my problem. So, I end up spending more than I have, because what I am trying to do can’t work. Contentment isn’t a money problem, a possession problem, or a location problem; it’s a problem of the heart and therefore is not solved by spending.
The final ingredient that works with ingratitude, need, and discontentment to set up your heart to misappropriate money is envy. If you are unthankful and convinced that you deserve more, if you have been able to convince yourself that you need certain things that you do not have, leaving you deeply discontented, you will invariably look over the fence and envy the person who appears to have what you have not yet been able to acquire. Envious people are always taking account. Envious people are always comparing. Envious people are constantly placing things on their “she has, but I don’t” list. Envious people regularly feel that they have been given a bad deal, so it is right for them to use their resources to settle the score. Envy will cause you to be both self-oriented and foolish in your use of money.
It is ingratitude, neediness, discontentment, and envy of the heart that cause us to be all too money conscious, all too self-focused in our use of it, and all too liberal in our expenditures. If we persist on that course, our life really will end up being “money, money, money,” no matter how much of it we actually have. We need to continue to remind ourselves that the problem with money is not that it exists. The problem with money is not that we have too little or too much. Money problems are always heart problems; they’re deeper than the size of our paycheck and the specificity of our budget. Money can be a blessing or a curse. Let’s consider what both sides look like.
1. Money is a window on the goodness of God.
James says it very well: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). If you allow yourself in a me-istic and materialistic culture to think with a moment of sanity, you will know that what James says is verified and demonstrated by your experience. If you have sufficient money to meet your daily needs, there is no way that you have controlled all the circumstances, locations, and relationships necessary to have that money. You may protest, “But Paul, I went out and got my job, and I have worked hard every day.” Yes, but you didn’t create the natural gifts that are necessary to qualify for and to do your work; you surely didn’t create the economic conditions necessary for the job to be available, and you definitely were not in control of the decision-making capacity of the person who hired you.
If we think with a humble and sound mind, it only makes sense that every good thing in our life is the result of the lovingkindness of One who is in control of the details and who has blessed us with things we could not have achieved, earned, or deserved. Money can sit in our hearts as another evidence of the grace of God, grace so tender and faithful that we continue to experience blessings even on our worst day. Money is meant to function as an arrow pointing to the goodness and faithfulness of God.
And even when money is lean, we are reminded of our dependence on someone bigger than us and how thankful we should be that we are not alone in lean circumstances.
2. Money is a window on what rules your heart.
When you get unexpected money, what is the first thing you want to do with it? Luella and I were in our early days of ministry, with two hungry children, barely making it on the meager salary our little church was able to pay us. I must admit that in those days I struggled a lot with envy and often wondered what in the world God was doing. One afternoon an unexpected and anonymous envelope came in the mail containing a $100 check. Before that check was completely out of the envelope I had spent it seven ways. I ran and showed it to Luella. It seemed to me like a million dollars. She looked at it for a moment, and then she looked up at me and said, “You know, Paul, we’re doing okay and we weren’t expecting this money. Why don’t we give it to someone less fortunate?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! I thought that this was the big one—my wife had gone nuts! That check slipped through my fingers as I begrudgingly gave it to a poor family in our church.
When you have extra money, what do you dream of buying? Does it make you happier to use your money for your own purposes and pleasure or to offer it to God for his purposes and the work of his kingdom? Do you find it way easier to get than to give? Do you envy the person next to you who has resources you don’t have? Do you tend to spend more than you should while telling yourself that you would give more if you could? Does the level of your contentment rise and fall with the amount of money in your wallet? Are you able to celebrate what you’ve been given while at the same time looking without compassion at someone clearly needier than you? Are you ready, willing, and quick to give? Do you look for need that you can alleviate with resources that you don’t really need? Are you glad to give, even in seasons when you don’t have much?
Money is an accurate window on what is truly important to us. It exposes the fact that this side of eternity it is really hard to hold in our hearts as important what God says is truly important. There is a dangerous tendency in each of our hearts to assign increasing importance to things beyond their true importance, and these things begin to command the thoughts, desires, and allegiance of our hearts. If you’re humbly willing to look, your desires for and use of money will help you see what is battling for the rulership of your heart.
3. Money is a window on the dangers of the fallen world.
Money is a doorway to danger. There are few greater dangers in this fallen world than to listen to the myriad voices that tell us that somehow, someway, satisfaction of heart can be found in possessing or experiencing something in creation. Money can be one of those things, or it can be what enables us to experience one of those things. It goes like this: “If only I had this much money, then I would be satisfied.” Or, “If only I could afford _______[fill in the blank], then I would be content.”
Money, what it can do and what it can supply, reminds me that our world is one of deceit and danger. Things are not always as they seem. And in this world of deceit and danger, there is no more dangerous lie than the one that says that life can be found somewhere outside of the Creator. How many people have believed that lie and have ended with both heart and wallet empty? The struggle with money in each of our hearts is a constant reminder that we still live in a danger zone. The war still goes on, and we must be willing to fight until the last enemy is under the foot of the Lord of grace, who will usher us into a place where the danger is no more.
4. Money is a means of responding to the needs of others.
It may seem obvious, but it is worth noting that money provides a wonderful means of blessing others. There is a way in which you and I are always viewing ourselves as either a container or a conduit for the money we are given. Either we want money to stop with us because we have conceived many ways that it will make our life better, easier, or more pleasurable, or we think of ourselves as a pipeline and are excited that the money we have been given can bless and benefit the lives of others. Either our money is the currency that pays the bills for the small-market visions of the kingdom of self, or it is a God-given tool in our hands for participating in the big-picture work of the kingdom of God. If we are honest, most of us would have to say that when it comes to money, we live quite inconsistently. Sometimes we are excited by the greater purposes of God’s kingdom, and in those moments we are cheerful givers. Other times we are quite full of ourselves and can’t think of anything better to do with our money than to spend it on ourselves. God hasn’t provided for us simply to provide for us, but in providing for us, he has enabled us to be a means of his provision for others.
5. Money can connect you to the work of the bigger kingdom.
I’ve already said it, but I want to emphasize it by making it a separate point: your use of money will be determined by your allegiance to the work of one of two kingdoms: the kingdom of God or the kingdom of self. God gives you money not so much to make sure that your kingdom works, but to connect you by grace to the work of a much bigger, much better kingdom. As you give yourself to the work of this kingdom, you get to watch your money do things that are literally of eternal consequence. In offering your resources to the bigger kingdom, your money is used to fuel the most important work in the universe—redemption.
Money Can Be Dangerous
1. Money can cause you to forget God.
Physical neediness can cause you to cry out to God for help, and as you cry out for help, you come to realize that you need it not only physically but also spiritually. A pastor of a church in an extremely affluent community told me that since his people are able to buy their way into or out of just about anything, it is hard for them to think of themselves as needy. The supposed self-reliance of wealth can tempt us to believe in the larger delusion of our autonomy—that we have a right to live life as we want—and of our self-sufficiency—that we have within ourselves all we need to be what we’re supposed to be and to do what we’re supposed to do. Money can allow us to afford a self-centered way of living that acts as if nothing is greater than us and more important than our individual wants, needs, and feelings.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. There is no teaching in Scripture that would lead us to believe that poor people are better off spiritually than others. My point is to alert you to one of the dangers of money. Money can function as an ingredient in a lifestyle that, at street level, forgets God’s existence and his plan. This lifestyle is more about personal glory than God’s glory, and it reduces one’s expenditure of money to personal desire, self-defined need, and the pursuit of individual comfort and pleasure. Those caught in that lifestyle may not theologically deny the existence of God, but their money supports a lifestyle that ignores it.
2. Money can change the way you think about you.
Money is a stimulant. It will be used to stimulate a Godward way of life or an inward way of life. A friend told me that for years he had prided himself on being committed to and contented with a “simple” lifestyle, that is, until he came into money. Suddenly he found himself wanting the more luxurious car; he was attracted to the more expensive shirt, and he wanted to eat at the better restaurant. He said, “It was humbling to admit that I hadn’t been living the simple life because I was spiritually committed to it. I’d been living the simple life because I was poor.”
Money can encourage you to be more self-focused and demanding; it can edge you toward being discontent with what once made you content, and, even more dangerous, money can move you to begin to expect from life what you should not expect and to feel that you deserve what you do not deserve. Money really can have a huge influence on how you define yourself and how you think about your life and on the expectations that shape your disappointments.
3. Money can cause you to look down on others.
What was going on was very clear and very sad. The affluent kids stood around and made fun of a homeless man who was doing his best to get out of their way. What was the difference between the kids and the homeless man? Well, in the deepest and most profound way, there was no difference. The kids and the homeless guy were all made in the image of God and meant to reflect his glory. They were all sinners in desperate need of redemption. Neither the homeless man nor the affluent teenagers had been in charge of all the circumstances that had led them to their place in life. Neither the kids nor the man could stand before God and say they deserve anything. But the boys didn’t see themselves as similar to the man. They saw themselves as a higher order of human being, and they treated the poor man as less than human.
What caused them to think the way they thought and to treat the man the way they did? Well, there are many answers to that question, too many for us to consider here, but there was one major ingredient that fueled it all—money. To those suburban high school boys, this man was a vagrant, a bum, a loser. They were the chosen ones. It was ugly and mean, but it pictured one of the dangers of money. As money redefines your identity, it can also change the way you look at others. Money can stimulate the prideful prejudice that lurks somewhere in the heart of every sinner.
4. Money can weaken your resolve to fight temptation.
When my friend made his simple-life admission, he was saying something else. In a real way, his poverty had protected him from being able to fully follow the trail of his greed. No, it hadn’t protected him from being envious and discontented at points, but he simply did not have the money to pay for what his selfish heart could imagine. This point is precisely why the Bible does alert us to the danger of riches. We come into this world as people who need to be retrained. We come into this world as a danger to ourselves. We are naturally more discontented than contented. We are naturally attracted to what should scare us. We intuitively push against God’s boundaries. So anything in our lives that protects us from us, anything that restrains us, or anything that makes it hard to go where our desires wander is a blessing.
Money is a danger in that it removes a restraint—affordability—and in so doing, exposes our hearts. It’s only when God’s grace has formed in us truly contented hearts that we can live retrained lives, not following the rabbit trail of every selfish desire that our wallets can afford. Look, most of us regularly buy what we do not need because we have followed desires that need to be restrained, and restraint is needed because we can afford whatever in that moment has caught the attention of our hearts.
5. Money can finance your allegiance to the kingdom of self.
Well, this is the bottom line. I’ve already said much about it, but this point too requires more special attention. There is no neutrality when it comes to your relationship to and daily use of money. As you hold and use your money, you must constantly remind yourself that the holding and using of money are acts of worship. That’s just how significant this issue is. Either you are using your funds in the worship of yourself, even if you don’t know it, or you are using your money in the self-conscious worship of God. You money is being invested in the building of your self-focused little kingdom of one or being offered in the interests of the grand and glorious eternal kingdom of God. This is the temptation that every sinner faces, to use the resources he has been given to finance the wants, needs, and desires of the kingdom of self, and the more money that is in his hands, the more power this temptation tends to have.
So, money really does matter. You’ve been placed by God in a world where money exists and will influence the shape and direction of your life. Because money exposes you to both blessing and danger, your issues with money run at a deeper level than how much you understand finances and how well you have constructed your budget. Are money, education, and budget beneficial? Of course! But they do not get down to the level where the real danger of money exists.
When I misuse money, I don’t misuse it because I am ignorant or without a budget. No, I misuse it because at that point I don’t care what God or anyone else says. I want what I want, and if I can use my resources to get it, I am going to get it. Money matters because it interacts with one of the most significant issues in my heart: the selfishness of sin. No amount of money, education, or budget construction has the power to free me from the ravenous greed of my sinful heart. For that, I can look only to one thing: the powerful grace of my Redeemer. He knows how selfish and greedy I can be. He knows how I make a resolution one day that I abandon the next. He knows how easily I am seduced into thinking that there is something in the creation that will satisfy my longing heart. He knows that I can say I believe in God yet live as if he does not exist. So, he has blessed me with his right-here, right-now grace. Yes, that grace forgives me, but it does more: it provides everything I need to live in the money-crazy world in the way that I was designed to live. What is the sweetest gift of that grace? Well, the sweetest gift is not a thing; it is a person. God’s best gift is himself. He comes and lives inside of me so that when desire within meets temptation without, I will have just what I need to fight the battle.
Money matters, but God’s grace matters even more. It alone provides both the strength and the freedom we will continue to need until the dangers of money are no more.
Review and Reflect
1. Review the Scripture passages that warn us about the dangers of money: Psalm 62:10; Proverbs 16:8; 23:4; 28:20; Ecclesiastes 5:10; Luke 12:34; 1 Timothy 6:9–10; and Hebrews 13:5. Which one(s) do you find most personally convicting, and why?
2. According to Scripture, money can also be a great blessing: Deuteronomy 15:10; Proverbs 3:9–10; 10:15; 22:7; Malachi 3:10; Luke 16:10–11; Acts 20:35; and James 4:1–3. How have these blessings played out in your own life?
3. How does your perception of need shape your use of money? As you assess your needs, how many of them could better be termed “wants”?
4. How do discontentment and ingratitude go hand in hand, and how can they lead to unwise handling of money?
5. Describe in your own words how money serves as a window.
Heart Reset