Wednesday 26 February 2014

You Can't Serve God and Money

You can’t serve God and money

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light.  
But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness! 
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money”
                      Matthew 6:19-24.
Here Jesus is talking about greed. Money and riches in themselves are not bad. The church needs wealthy people to help in the spread of the gospel.
It’s what you do with your money. Don’t hoard it for the sake of hoarding it.
There’s a very famous story of a miserly woman in the late eighteen hundreds. She had substantial wealth enough to pay doctors to help her sick son. Yet the son died because she didn’t want to pay out the money and was looking for a charity hospital to help him and save her money.
While this is an extreme case it is what Jesus is talking about.
Some people put their trust entirely in money. Proud they are self sufficient. Thus quite often they miss the blessings of God.
You can always tell where a persons heart is.
Over the years that I’ve been in church work I’ve met people that are earning an excellent base wage but work long hours of overtime to get the extra they want to buy a new toy, be it a $500 dollar cell phone, half million dollar house or a fancy car.
They work so much they can’t enjoy their toys.
While they claim to love God they are so absorbed in making money that they don’t have time to serve Him.
  I think it will be interesting to see how big their house is in heaven.
Jesus made it clear “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money”
We all need money but my cousin use to say “you can’t go anywhere without it. But you can’t take it when you go.”
We all as Christians need to take a long hard look at were our treasure is. Is it hear on earth or is it in heaven?
Do we really need all the toys of this world?
Or could our time be better spent serving God even if it’s only in a small way.
Think about it?

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