Month: August 2021

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. 1 Timothy 6:10

            This verse is so well known in our culture. This is one of those that those in the church have heard over and over, and even those outside the church have heard it. They may not know it comes from the Bible, but they’ve at least known that someone somewhere said it. And it’s an important one. First, I want to talk about how it’s often misquoted. What we usually hear is “Money is the root of all evil.” In other words, money is bad. In fact, it’s so bad that everything else bad comes from it. That’s not what scripture says. God is not telling us that money in itself is evil. Money is, well, just money. It’s a thing. An inanimate object. It has zero power in and of itself for good or evil. I once read a novel about groups of people who were in a race to find a treasure trove of money that had been hidden hundreds of years earlier. What they found was a stash of shells. Those shells had been used as money in an earlier culture but had no value in today’s economy.

            What has power is our attitude toward this thing called money. This includes our attitude towards possessions. “The love of money” could also have been translated as “greed.” In other words, this is talking about an attitude of wanting more stuff, more things. That can be in the form of money, or the things that money can buy. The difficulty is that we need certain things. For example, we need food to survive. But we don’t need the best food of the highest quality prepared in the way we prefer with the tastiest seasonings. Does that mean that eating good food is evil? Of course not. Again, it’s our attitude. Do we insist on only eating the best foods? Or are we thankful for any food that fuels our bodies and keeps us healthy? When it comes to money, we do need a certain amount of money to buy the necessities of life. But then we need to define what’s a necessity. I find that as I go through life, more and more things become “necessary” in my mind. I sometimes stop and ask myself, “Is this thing necessary to sustain life?” When seen through that lens, it’s amazing how much of what we have is unnecessary.

            There are reasons to have things beyond just sustaining life and I don’t believe that God is opposed to that. For example, I’m typing this on a laptop. Necessary to sustain life? No. Useful in my everyday life? Yes. A blessing from God? Most definitely. Next to me is a table that I cherish! Again, it’s not a necessity, but it’s very useful. In addition, it has a lot of meaning for me because if its background. Having that table is another blessing from God.

            The real question we need to ask ourselves is why we want something, whether it’s money or some other possession. Is it for personal gain, or for a status symbol, or out of fear that God won’t provide? Any of these are attitudes that do not honor God and will only lead us further and further into sinful thoughts and attitudes. However, if we use our money and possessions to help others, that honors God. If we see everything we have as a gift from God (which it is), the God is praised. If we know that God will always provide for all our needs, just as He has promised, then He will be glorified. The bottom line is, where is our focus? Are we focusing on what we want or what others will think? Or are we focused on God and His gifts and provisions? If we focus on God, money loses its power to control our emotions and lead us into sin. Instead, it becomes a method of glorifying God and growing closer to Him.

“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” John 14:26

            Are you good at making decisions? Are you one of those people who is presented with a choice to be made and you make it immediately? If so, have you ever regretted a decision you made? Do you wish you had spent more time thinking through all the details and ramifications? Or are you more like me – someone who can’t seem to make a decision to save your life? Do you have to think through every single detail and every possible consequence of each choice before deciding? If so, have you ever waited too long until the decision is made for you and there’s no longer a choice? Whether you make decisions quickly or agonize over them, I think we’ve all experienced times when we just had someone to tell us the right choice to make, someone who knows where it will lead and what the future will hold.

            How wonderful it must have been for the disciples who had just that! They spent three years hanging out with the Son of God, who walked among them, ate with them, woke up next to them, and held conversations with them. They could ask Him anything they wanted and He could share His heavenly wisdom with them. I’m guessing they didn’t always like His answers but at least they knew.

            In the last post, I mentioned how Jesus prepared His disciples for the time He would no longer be with them, even though they didn’t realize that time was at hand. This verse is still part of that same conversation. He’s telling them that even after He is no longer walking among them as a human man, they’ll still have access to the wisdom of heaven. In fact, we have a real advantage over the disciples. Even though they were with Jesus a lot, they weren’t with him 24/7. But the Holy Spirit is. If we have accepted Christ and are walking with Him, we have the Spirit in us and speaking with and to us at all times. We have heavenly wisdom inside us for every single decision, big or small, that comes our way.

            The next obvious questions are, “Then why do I make wrong decisions?” or “Why is it so difficult to make a decision?” Just because the Spirit is within us and is trying to guide and direct us, that doesn’t mean we’re listening or obeying. The Spirit is talking to us, but so is the world. And our enemy. And our flesh. And those voices can be so much louder! Other times the Spirit’s guidance seems so illogical! So we reason that it surely can’t be the right answer. So how do we know which voice is from the Holy Spirit? First is experience. The longer we walk with Christ and the more we listen for the Spirit’s voice, the more likely we are to recognize it. Another way is to look for peace. Does the seemingly illogical choice bring peace to our soul? If so, there’s a pretty good chance that’s the Spirit’s voice.

            The next time you’re faced with a difficult decision, I encourage you to stop. If you make decisions quickly, stop and listen for His voice. If you agonize over decisions, stop agonizing and listen for His voice. He’s just waiting to guide you into the decision that He knows is for your good and His glory.

“In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.” John 14:2

            Have you ever felt unsettled? Like you’re not sure what’s going to happen next, but whatever it is, it’s just a little bit scary? Or maybe that unknown is a lot scary. Do you ever feel that your life is spinning out of control? Or perhaps you think that your life would be perfectly controlled if only the world around us weren’t in such chaos. No matter how hard we try, we just can’t seem to make things go the way we want them to go. And by “things,” I mean people, circumstances, or anything else we foolishly think we should be able to control.

            This very familiar verse occurred at what we commonly call The Last Supper. Jesus was sharing Passover meal with His disciples and was also teaching them. What I’ve always found so interesting about this verse and the ones around it is that Jesus is offering them peace and comfort before they even knew they were going to need it. He knew that He was going to be arrested that night, given a rigged trial, and condemned to die the next day. Within just a few hours he would be taken from their presence and they would be bereft and very scared. Even while facing the most difficult situation that has ever been endured or ever will be, He was thinking of them. He would be taking on the sins of the world, but He was still concerned for the loneliness and fear they would be facing and was preparing them for it. Do you think that when they mostly all deserted Him and He hung dying, they were thinking of these words? Or that after He was in the tomb, they were comforted by what He said? Or do you think that it wasn’t until much later that they recalled these words and realized the importance of them?

            God still prepares us today. He’s constantly getting us ready for what lies ahead. Since we don’t know what’s in front of us, we often do realize that until we look back. That’s when we realize that God was in the “chaos” all along, that He was hard at work preparing us, shaping and molding us long before we knew what was going to hit us. In those times of uncertainty and chaos, we can take comfort in know that God has already gone ahead of us. He’s prepared the road we’re currently walking and He’s prepared us for that road. In addition, He’s preparing us for what we’re going to face. But He doesn’t even stop there. At the end of our time on this earth, He has a place prepared for us to be with Him. It will be beautiful and spacious place, a home with loving family and full of opportunities to love and serve our God. When we get there, we’ll realize that we’ve never really been home before. This earth is not our home. The place God is preparing will be Home like nothing else we could experience.

“Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.” Romans 12:16

            I was recently part of a conversation discussing who were considered the “outcast” versus the “cool” when in high school. What was interesting was the differing memories of people who went to the same school at nearly the same time. One person said they were an outcast because of where they lived. That person’s sibling not only didn’t feel an outcast but was voted senior class president. These two people obviously have very different personalities. But that doesn’t change that one went through high school feeling like an outcast based on something that couldn’t be changed.

            There are times when all of us feel as if we are outcasts. That feeling may have more to do with our imagination than with reality. Or we may actually not be a part of whatever group of people we’re with at the time.  We may be the only woman in the room, or the only one of our race, or age, or any one of a number of other variables. Those differences are very real and they will not disappear. Nor should they. God made us each unique and we should celebrate those differences.

            Since those differences will always be there, how can we live in harmony, as this verse requires? Harmony does not mean there are no differences. It doesn’t mean we have to all be the same. Rather, it means we hold one another in mutual regard. We don’t ever think we’re better than anyone else. Because we’re not. We may have more privilege or be regarded more highly by the world. But that’s a false status. The reality is that all of us are in desperate need of a savior and any one of us has sinned enough to require Jesus to have to die in order to pay for that sin. There is absolutely no cause for pride or conceit.

You and I are not better than anyone else. Neither are we worse. In God’s sight we are all equal. That means that every one of us should treat every other person as if they are God’s beloved, because they are. And so are you. Let us all live in that reality as we reach out to others, whether they are in a “low” position or “high,” remembering that those positions don’t exist in God’s eyes. That’s when our differences cease to be divisive and become a celebration of the beautiful tapestry that is God’s people.