Baptizing Our Wallets

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.