Money

1 Peter 1:18-19  (ESV)

18 knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

“There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else there’s MasterCard.” That popular ad of some years ago suggested that the credit card would help us get the things that make life better—things money can buy.

When one stops to think about it, though, there are quite a few things money can’t buy. While it can buy exotic and luxurious vacations, it can’t really make a marriage better or improve a relationship with your kids. It can pay for surgeries and medicines, but there are some illnesses that surgery and medicine can’t heal. It can make you very popular, but it can’t buy you true friendship.

Money also can’t buy a clear conscience and provide peace with God. It cannot purchase the certainty of life in heaven after you die. No, all the riches in the world can’t buy us one ounce of freedom from a guilty conscience or from the fear of dying.

For these crucial things that money can’t buy, there is Jesus. His blood was the full payment for our freedom from guilt, fear, and death. The Bible teaches: “You know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed…, but with the precious blood of Christ.”

Imagine you are about to be executed—deservedly so—for crimes you have committed. Imagine being locked in a prison cell, waiting for the end. Then your brother walks into that prison and takes your place. He dies and you go free because your sentence is carried out on your innocent brother. He purchased (redeemed) your life with his.

Come back to reality. All people are sinners and deserved to die eternally. But Jesus, the perfect Son of God, came from heaven to take our place. He bore the punishment our sins had earned so that we could be free from the prison of eternal death. When the debt of our sin was far beyond our ability to pay, in love he paid that debt with his own blood at Calvary’s cross.

Money’s great. But there are some things money can’t buy, such as a relationship with God. This is a free gift of God’s love, paid for with the precious blood of Jesus.

Dear Lord, Joy, hope and comfort are ours. Knowing that our sins are forgiven and our relationship with God is restored by the blood that you shed on the cross. In the name of Jesus, Amen.

An egg with money in it

Psalm 34:10 (ESV)

The young lions suffer want and hunger;

    but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.

Liz Cobos had separated from her husband. She was emotionally devastated, and the reality of keeping her two preschool daughters fed and cared for had all but shattered her spirit. She believed in God, but where was He? She felt so alone. Reluctantly, she decided to file for financial aid, until she could find a job.

However, the paperwork would take some time, and a few days later, Liz realized that she had no money, and no food in the cupboards. She checked her purse and pockets just in case, but there was no money anywhere, no way to buy even a small bag of groceries. "I sent the girls next door because I knew my nice neighbor would feed them," she recalls. "Then I sat on the couch and cried." God, please, just a little help...just enough to buy some groceries for the next week. As Liz wept, five-year-old Crystal came back into the apartment. "Mommy, what's the matter?" She asked.

Liz didn't want Crystal to see her crying. "Nothing, honey. Why don't you go outside and do something?"

"Like what?" Crystal persisted.

"Oh." Liz wiped her eyes. "Why don't you take out the garbage? That would be a big help."

"Okay!" Crystal took the garbage bag and headed out the door and down to the apartment complex dumpsters. A moment later, she was back. "Mommy, can I keep this plastic egg that I found in the dump? I can put my Barbie doll clothes in it."

"No, honey," Liz murmured absently. "You're not supposed to bring things in from the garbage. It might be dirty."

"It's not, Mommy. Please? I'll keep the egg and you can keep the money in it."

Liz's heart seemed to stop. "What money?"

"Here," Crystal said, and she pulled four twenty dollar bills out of the egg. Liz stared at the bills. The dumpsters were huge-there was no possibly way she could find the owner of those bills. Did God mean them for her? Hadn't she asked? "I will never leave you nor forsake you." The comforting words from the Bible washed over her, and she understood.

"The money bought us groceries until my aid came through," Liz says. "I found a job, and things are much better today, but I've never forgotten that moment, and the reassurance it brought me." It wasn't so much the money itself, she says, but the certainty that God was near and caring for her, answering her prayer in His own way, in His own time. "Nothing is impossible with Him."

Dear Lord, we want to take the time to thank You for the ways that You chose to supply our needs. Even in ways that we don’t think are possible.  In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Dressing for Success

1 Timothy 6:10 (NIV)

For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Donned in clothes belonging to another, I could be anything I wanted…at least temporarily.

Playing dress up was a popular kid's game when I was growing up. After all, the techies hadn't invented the distractions that currently occupy kids' attention and often steal their imagination. With an adult's clothes-along with accompanying implements found around the various houses, the list of our futures was as endless as our mind's eyes. Teachers, preachers, housewives, nurses, doctors, princesses, kings, and queens. We were dressed for success and frequently believed we could be these people when we reached adulthood.

Sometimes the dress up doesn't stop when we become adults; we just choose alternate things to suit up in…money and possessions among them. But people who long to be rich "fall into temptation and are trapped by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction" (I Timothy 6:9 NLT).

Many mistakenly quote the next verse as; "Money is the root of evil" when what it actually says is, "For the love of money is at the root of all kinds of evil" (v. 10). Human nature leads us to dress in what we love…what draws our time and attention. Money is inanimate and neutral…neither good nor evil. It's the "love of" that determines whether we dress in greed or generosity. Criminal acts, marital relationship quandaries, partnership splits, friendship turmoil, and church fights all result from dressing in the wrong definition of success.

Neither money nor what it can buy brings true happiness. Contentment with the necessities of life, realizing possessions are temporary, keeping our motives in check, loving God and people more than things, and sharing with others what God entrusts to us are all good ways to put on clothes that will always fit regardless of age. What attitudes are you dressing in?

Dear Lord,  thank You for being the giver of all good gifts and of everything we own presently or ever will. We ask that we would turn our eyes from greed and toward the opportunities You give us to assist others. In Jesus’ Name. Amen. 

Where is Your Trust?

Proverbs 23:5 (NIV)

Cast but a glance at riches, and they are gone,

    for they will surely sprout wings

    and fly off to the sky like an eagle.

In 1988, William "Buddy" Post of Oil City, Pennsylvania, won $16.2 million in the Pennsylvania Lottery. The jackpot was to be paid to Buddy over a period of twenty-five years. Even before the first check arrived, Post's landlady sued, claiming she owned part of the winning ticket. The courts awarded her one-third of the proceeds. Meanwhile, Post and various relatives opened a bar, a used-car lot and other businesses, using the promise of lottery proceeds to come as capital. All the businesses failed. In 1993, his brother was convicted of attempting to kill Buddy and his wife in hopes of inheriting the lottery money. Post's sixth wife left him and filed for divorce, and Buddy was ordered to pay her $40,000 a year in support. In 1996, after falling $500,000 in debt, he filed for bankruptcy. "Money didn't change me," insists Post, a 58-year-old former carnival worker and cook. "It changed people around me that I knew, that I thought cared a little bit about me. But they only cared about the money." "I'm just going to stay at home and mind my p's and q's," he said. "Money draws flies."

There is no trust in money, it is fleeting and it does not bring us security. But trust in Christ brings eternal peace and security. 

Where is your trust?

Dear Lord, thank You that we can trust in You. Help us seek after Your will today that we may bring honor to You in all we say and do? In Jesus’ Name, Amen. 

A lesson from 2 Nickles and 5 Pennies

Proverbs 3:27-28 (NIV)

27 Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,

    when it is in your power to act.

28 Do not say to your neighbor,

    “Come back tomorrow and I’ll give it to you”—

    when you already have it with you.

In the days when an ice cream sundae cost much less, a 10-year-old boy entered a hotel coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. "How much is an ice cream sundae?" "Fifty cents," replied the waitress. The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it. "How much is a dish of plain ice cream?" he inquired. Some people were now waiting for a table and the waitress was a bit impatient. "Thirty-five cents," she said brusquely. The little boy again counted the coins. "I'll have the plain ice cream," he said. The waitress brought the ice cream, put the bill on the table and walked away. The boy finished the ice cream, paid the cashier and departed. When the waitress came back, she began wiping down the table and then swallowed hard at what she saw. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies - her tip.

What a great lesson to each of us. Live within our means.  How easy would it have been for our young little friend to get a sundae? But instead he thought about what he had and got the ice cream so he could leave a thank you for his waitress.

Dear Lord, we pray that we would make it our goal today to not spend more than we have or above our means. Help us to use what You give us wisely. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

Honesty In Everything

Proverbs 12:22 (NIV)

The Lord detests lying lips,

    but he delights in people who are trustworthy.

As an armored truck passed by the Los Angeles bus stop where he was sitting alone last Monday night, Ascension Franco Gonzales saw a clear plastic bag tumble onto the street. The vehicle kept going. The guards inside it were totally unaware that part of their load had fallen out.

Mr. Gonzales went over and saw bundles of $20 bills. The 22-year-old man actually feared for his life -- afraid that someone would see him with the clear bag and kill him for its contents! So he began walking with it and looking through trash cans for something opaque enough to cover it.

With the money concealed in a sack, he took a taxi home. He told eight of his friends what had happened, and they tried to help him decide what to do. Gonzales, after all, is not a wealthy man. He makes $1,300 a month washing dishes -- and sends $800 of that amount to his family in Mexico. He is an undocumented immigrant in the United States whose money has been used by his family to do such things as pay for an indoor toilet and for a cousin's funeral.

In the meanwhile, the armored truck company had discovered that some money was missing -- a total of $203,000, all in cash. Police began a fruitless search. The possibility of an inside job at the company was being discussed. And nobody had any clues that would have reasonably led to Mr. Gonzales.

"Are you going to keep it?" asked his friends. "Or are you going to return it?" Gonzales wrestled with the question. On Tuesday morning, a TV news show broadcast a story about the missing money. This is the part of the report that Gonzales remembers most vividly: "The announcer asked whether there was anyone in Los Angeles who was honest enough to hand in so much money."

Around 11:00 a.m. that day, he called the police. Officers came quickly and counted the cash. It was all still there. "I am surprised and pleased," said a detective. What a sad commentary that such honesty astounds us.

Question: What would you have done? More important question: What do you do with company postage, office long distance, petty cash, or other items at your disposal each day? The real test of honesty is in the little things of life.

Good character isn't created in moments of crisis or novel opportunity, just revealed. And honesty, like all the virtues, is a habit learned through practice.

Dear Lord, We pray today that we would be honest in the small things that confront us each and every day. Help us be honest today in everything. IN Jesus’ Name, Amen.