Once
upon a time, a man was getting ready to be baptized in the river as an expression
of his devotion to the Lord and his desire for God to have control of his
life. But just as he was about to go
under, he shouted, “Wait!” He took his wallet
out of his pocket so he could hold above the water. The pastor asked, “You don’t want your wallet
to get wet?” The man replied, “No. God
can take charge of my life, but not my money!”
More
often than we’d like to admit, we’re like this man. Trusting Jesus is fine, we may think, but we
have to be practical. We have to take
care of ourselves. It takes money to get
through life and to face its demands.
When we think this way, it means that we haven’t surrendered ourselves
fully to the Lord. We’re holding
something back from him because we don’t fully trust in his providence. We rely on our bank accounts instead of the
Lord.
In
other words, money has become our idol.
We trust it to take care of us, to make us happy, and to fulfill our
needs. We believe that a little more
money will solve our problems, but it won’t.
Money only makes us anxious and worried, whether we are millionaires or
living paycheck to paycheck. It makes no
sense to devote our lives to something that makes us feel this way, but this is
exactly what we do. When we think that
money is more important or reliable than God, it has become an idol. Like any other idol we may have, we need to
bring it to God and put it in submission to him.
We
can make God the Lord of our finances when we follow Christ’s example of generous
giving. He turned more than 60 gallons
of water into wine at a wedding feast: far more than they needed to keep the
party going. When he fed the 5,000, he
didn’t just give them enough food to get through the day. He provided so much that everyone ate all
they wanted, with twelve baskets of food leftover. Giving generously means more than giving a
lot, however. Generosity is cheerful
giving. You are generous when you give
because you enjoy it, not when you give resentfully or out of a sense of
duty. By giving generously, we put the
Lord in charge of our money.
Not only does God provide the example for cheerful giving as a way to escape the tyranny of money, but he gives us the ability to do so. First, we are able to give to others because God has first given to us. An awareness of the fullness of blessing in our lives opens us share those blessings. Because the Lord has given so much to us, we’re able to give so much to him and to others. And second, God’s generous giving arouses gratitude in our spirits. Through his incredible grace (which is the ultimate generosity), he enables us to let go of what our sinful self wants to clutch to itself. He changes our hearts so that instead being completely focused on ourselves, we can see beyond ourselves to others, and to God himself.
Generous
giving is an act of trust, knowing that as we give, God’s grace will provide
and care for us. May we all trust God
enough to get our wallets wet.
