May 15, 2012 By bnjewell
I once heard someone say that fear is the opposite of faith. If that’s true, it means that fear can hold us back from being faithful stewards of God’s money.
Everything that we have comes from God, and He wants us to be good and fruitful stewards of the resources that He gives us. He wants us to take His money and make it grow. But in order to do that, we’re going to have to overcome the fears that hold us back.
To learn about what it means to be a good and fruitful servant, we’ve been studying the Parable of the Talents found in Matthew 25:14-30. So far we’ve learned that stewardship starts by recognizing God’s sovereignty, and that good stewards are hard workers. There’s another important lesson here, though: Good stewards are not paralyzed by fear.
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May 6, 2012 By bnjewell
How do you turn five bags of gold into ten? Unless you’re King Midas himself, there’s only one way to do it: Get to work!
In this series, we’ve been examining the biblical truth of stewardship. God gave us everything that we have, and He wants us to be good and fruitful stewards of the wealth that He has entrusted to us. In fact, He wants to see us make His money grow.
To help us understand these truths, we’ve been studying the Parable of the Bags of Gold (or the Parable of the Talents, as it’s traditionally called) found in Matthew 25:14-30. If you’re unfamiliar with the parable, you can read the full text here. If you know the story, though, let’s focus on the key to making God’s money grow — hard work.
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April 26, 2012 By bnjewell
When it comes to the financial world, who determines what is fair?
I used to think that I should be the universe’s judge of fairness. But God doesn’t see things that way. He seems to think that He’s in control around here… and He’s not as concerned with “fairness” as I am.
God wants us to be good and fruitful stewards of His wealth. In order to do that, though, we have to start with the right attitude. That means recognizing that He owns everything in this universe, and that He gives us all of the financial resources that we have. And it also means recognizing that He has the authority to give someone else much more than He gives us… even if we don’t think it’s fair.
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April 16, 2012 By bnjewell
Does God care about what you do with your money? You bet He does! After all, your money is really God’s money, and He gave it to you with specific purposes in mind.
In this series, we’ve talked about how God owns it all, and how God gives it all to us to use according to His purposes. That’s an exciting truth to grasp, but also a sobering one. If every cent I earn is God’s money, that He has chosen to give me, don’t I have an obligation to use it in a way that is honoring to Him? [Read more…]
April 8, 2012 By bnjewell
Where does your wealth come from?
If you think that your wealth comes from your hard work, you’re only half right. Because God says that He owns everything in the world. Doesn’t that mean that everything that we enjoy in life ultimately has to come from Him? [Read more…]
March 27, 2012 By bnjewell
If you think that you really, truly own anything in this universe, you’re mistaken. Because God thinks that He owns it all.
When we talk about personal finance, it’s easy to make plans about what we’re going to do with “our money.” But when we talk about “our money,” it’s important to understand what that really means. The money isn’t ours in the sense that we own it; it’s simply ours in the sense that we’re responsible for managing it.
Too often, though, we begin to believe that the things that we have are really ours. This attitude can get down into our hearts and cause us to become slaves to money. To break free, we’ve got to replace that erroneous idea with this true one: God owns it all. [Read more…]
March 18, 2012 By bnjewell
If you’ve become a slave to money, it’s not because someone has slipped iron chains around your ankles. It’s because wrong attitudes have infiltrated your heart.
Every great failure of the human race can be traced back to the deceitfulness of men’s hearts. The Bible tells us, after all, that “the heart is deceitful, above all things” (Jer. 17:9). When we meet God and surrender our lives to His will, we invite Him into our hearts. But sometimes the old, deceitful attitudes of our hearts remain in place. It’s those attitudes that cause us to continue to struggle with sin. And it’s those attitudes that we must fix in order to break free from slavery. [Read more…]
March 8, 2012 By bnjewell
Under the cover of night, runaway slaves moved quickly and quietly from one stranger’s house to the next, slowly making their way on the journey to freedom via the Underground Railroad. The darkness, the unfamiliar places and the relentless slave hunters made the trip terrifying. The only thing worse than escaping, in fact, would be remaining in bondage.
We’re blessed to live in an era in which human slavery is no longer legal in the United States. But just because you’re not shackled by physical chains doesn’t mean that you’re not a slave. The Bible tells us that apart from the grace of God, we are all slaves to sin (Romans 6:17). And Jesus also warned us that, if we’re not careful, we can become slaves to money.
But slavery doesn’t have to be the end of the story. Jesus died to set us free from bondage to sin. And if we allow His redeeming work to take place in deep areas of our lives, His power sets us free from financial slavery, too. [Read more…]
February 26, 2012 By bnjewell
Who is your provider? Who do you count on to make sure that you have clothes on your back and food on the table? If the world around you disintegrates, who will you trust to get you through it?
If your answer is anything other than “God,” you may have fallen into a false faith — faith in money. [Read more…]
February 13, 2012 By bnjewell
Via Flickr, by user romain-novarina. Used under Creative Commons License.
The lights are up, mics are on, and the film is about to roll. Is your heart ready for its close-up?
We often hear cheesy lines about introspective actors asking their directors “What’s my motivation?” Supposedly, understanding a character’s motivation in saying a line helps the actor to deliver it better. But it’s not just method actors who need to examine the motivations of what they’re about to do: To succeed at the role of You in the movie of your life, you’d better makes sure that the motives behind your actions are right as well.
“What does this have to do with money?” you ask. Well, money can be a powerful motivator. But when it begins changing the motivations behind important things in your life, money makes a slave of you. [Read more…]