Christian Living

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also – Matthew 6:21

How you handle money reveals a lot about your spiritual condition. If your treasure is on earth and you are focused on accumulating more and more material things, it is evident there is a heart problem.

It is easy to be influenced by the world and therefore think like the world thinks. The prevalent attitude is, “this is my money, my house, my car; I can do with it what I please.” But you need to embrace a basic biblical truth and that is that God owns everything: “the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof: the world, and they that dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1).

This truth should change your whole perspective. Everything that you have belongs to God and he is blessing you to enjoy it. In fact, if you are his child, you belong to him in a special way. Paul writes that you are not your own for you are bought with a price. Our body belongs to the Lord. Our mind belongs to him; our time belongs to him; and certainly all that we possess truly belongs to him.

While in most cases it is through work that we receive what we need to sustain us, it is God who gives us the power to get wealth. So as he provides a job and gives you the mind and body capable of doing what is required on the job, you must give thanks for what he has provided. You then should be a faithful steward of all with which you have been entrusted.

If you are a good steward, you will not live above your means, incur debts you cannot pay, or waste the resources you have been blessed to accumulate. Recognizing your role as a steward—a manager of what God has given you—will not deprive you of liberty, but will keep you from being enslaved by the love of money. If fact you will become a generous giver and find a great joy in knowing that God loves a cheerful giver.