Many years ago I had the opportunity to browse through the effects and archives of a man of great faith. This man served the Lord diligently throughout his lifetime and accomplished many great things for God’s cause. Like others before and after him, he determined he would not ask people to financially support his work but instead, prayerfully entrust it to the Lord and expect God to provide. This man was known for being free from the love of money—the love that, sadly, has harmed so many individuals and destroyed so many ministries.
But as I looked through his material, I noticed something interesting: He talked about money a lot. His letters and updates may never have directly requested donations, but they did seem at times to hint at it. He never directly asked, but he did seem to imply it. In fact, money often seemed to dominate his thoughts and his conversations. I don’t mean to say there is anything wrong or immoral about that or that this is any blot on his character. However, it did teach me that being free from the love of money is not the same as being free from obsessing about money. Money can dominate our thoughts and our hearts even if we do not idolize it.
It struck me that day that there are two different ways we can dishonor God in our relationship with money. And, strangely, they are almost complete opposites of one another.
The first is to fail to be thoughtful with how we use our money. This happens when we fail to treat our money seriously, fail to exercise an appropriate amount of control over it, and fail to express generosity with it. Essentially, it is when we neglect to remember that our money is actually God’s money and that we are duty-bound to relate to it as stewards rather than owners. If we are to faithfully steward it, we must know where it comes from and where it is going. We must ensure we are directing it to good purposes instead of bad ones and better purposes instead of worse ones. We must relate to our money in such a way that we are prepared to offer an account of it to the Lord. We can dishonor God by treating our money flippantly or casually.
The second way we can dishonor God with our money is to obsess about every dollar and every cent. It’s to relate to money as if it is the most consequential way we can prove our love and loyalty to God and as if his provision for us is limited by the degree to which we pinch every penny. Like the gentleman I mentioned earlier, we can be free from the love of money but still have an unhealthy relationship with it, perhaps like the person who is free from the sin of gluttony but is bound by an obsession with accounting for every calorie. As is so often the case in the Christian life, there is peril on both sides.
We can be mastered by our money by spending too much or too little, by thinking about it too often or too seldom.
Somewhere between those two opposites lies a smooth middle in which we relate to money healthily and well. We acknowledge that money matters and that we are accountable to God for the ways we use or misuse it. Yet we also acknowledge that it’s only money, that it is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. And the harsh reality is that we can be mastered by our money by spending too much or too little, by thinking about it too often or too seldom. It’s God’s money so of the highest importance, but it’s also merely money, a tool that passes through our hands and goes as easily as it comes.
