Testing Belief

HT:  Vitamin Z

Your Heart Will Follow Your Money

"Suppose you buy shares of General Motors. What happens? You suddenly develop interest in GM. You check the financial pages. You see a magazine article about GM and read every word, even though a month ago you would have passed right over it. 

Suppose you’re giving to help African children with AIDS. When you see an article on the subject, you’re hooked. If you’re sending money to plant churches in India and an earthquake hits India, you watch the news and fervently pray. 

As surely as the compass needle follows north, your heart will follow your treasure. Money leads; hearts follow. 

I’ve heard people say, “I want more of a heart for missions.” I always respond, “Jesus tells you exactly how to get it. Put your money in missions—and in your church and the poor—and your heart will follow”"

                    - Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle, p.44


HT: Vitamin Z

Links Worth a Look

Three list links worth checking out:

Man of Steel: 20 Reasons Why Superman Isn't Jesus

The 7 Most Important Things to Know About Money

9 Things You Should Know About Father's Day

Money Money Money

Pete Wilson on money and greed as idols (from Empty Promises):

"I've had to learn the hard way that money never wants to be just money in my life. It's always trying to position and manipulate itself into becoming something more..." (pages 95-96)

"That's a lesson I believe we all need when it comes to our money and our lives. We need to learn the joy of letting go. In fact, we probably need to learn it over and over again, to counteract the temptations of idolatry in our lives." (page 103)

"In fact, the only way I know how to fight back against allowing money to become an idol, the only way I know to break the greedy patter of get, get, get in my life, is the one that Jesus taught and modeled for us again and again.

The healthy way to handle money - and any other potential idol in our lives - is to give, give, give, trusting God to provide what we really need." (page 105)

Better Than...

From Justin Taylor quoting John Piper - Having God Is Better than Money, Sex, Power, or Popularity

"We need to ponder the superiority of God as our great reward over all that the world has to offer.

If we don’t, we will love the world like everyone else and live like every one else.

So take the things that drive the world and ponder how much better and more abiding God is: take money or sex or power or popularity. Think about these things.

First think about them in relation to death. Death will take away every one of them: money, sex, power, and popularity. If that is what you live for, you won’t get much, and what you get, you lose. But God’s treasure is “abiding.” It lasts. It goes beyond death.

It’s better than money because God owns all the money and he is our Father. “All things are yours, and you are Christ’s and Christ is God’s” (1 Corinthians 3:22-23).

It’s better than sex. Jesus never had sexual relations, and he was the most full and complete human that ever will exist. Sex is a shadow, an image, of a greater reality—of a relationship and pleasure that will make sex seem like a yawn.

The reward of God is better than power. There is no greater human power than to be a child of the Almighty God. “Do you not know that we shall judge angels” (1 Corinthians 6:3)?

It’s better than popularity. Fame is a pipe dream if you are only known by human nobodies. But if the greatest beings know you, that is a popularity of another kind. The greatest popularity is to be known by God (1 Corinthians 8:3; Galatians 4:9). And when it comes to angels: “Are they not all ministering spirits, sent out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation” (Hebrews 1:14)?

And so it goes on and on. Everything the world has to offer, God is better and more abiding. There is no comparison. God wins—every time.

The question is: will we have him? Will we wake up from the trance of this stupefying world and see and believe and rejoice and love? And suffer?