INMERSO

The Grace of God and Our Finances

There are many things that human loves, their family, their spouse, their work, and so we can mention a number of them, but there is one that most of the time is desired in the wrong way, the love of wealth. We all have needs to cover, and we know that the way to get something in our world is by using money. It is money that makes it possible to acquire our livelihood, our homes and everything material that makes our lives easier. Our entire economy is managed through the exchange of goods.

As Christians, we often think that money and wealth are something we should avoid because we have been mistakenly taught that wealth is bad. If we search the Bible we won't find any passage where money is declared as something bad. If we think carefully we will find that God gave us the knowledge to develop a financial system based on currency.

Jesus himself tells us and exhorts us to ask him and He will supply according to the passage of Matthew 7:7-11.

7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; call, and it will be opened to you, 8 for everyone who asks, receives; and he who seeks, finds; and he who calls, will be opened. 9 What man is there among you that if his son asks him for bread, he will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a snake? 11 For if you, being evil, know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? 12 Therefore all things that you want men to do with you, so do you also do with them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

In order to understand this passage, we first have to clarify some biblical principles that cannot be violated. First, God calls us to love Him above all things and second, to always obey Him. When our love is diverted towards other things we are putting God aside and raising an idol in his place, and God is not pleased with that. One of the places where the human being wrongly puts his heart, is wealth. That's why Jesus said that it is very difficult for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, because the heart of most idolizes money and not God.

This matter is well clarified by Jesus when he speaks to the rich young man (Matthew 10:16-22). He asks Jesus what he has to do to inherit heaven after having declared that he has fulfilled the commandments. Jesus knowing his heart tells him that he has to get rid of everything, give it to the poor and follow him. The young man perhaps believed that Jesus was going to ask him for something simple and when he heard those words he was sad and left.

Was it Jesus' purpose to take away the wealth? Definitely not. Jesus wanted the young man to realize where his love was. The young man discovered that he loved his possessions more than God himself and forgot that that God he rejected is the same God who enriched him. He left and couldn't accept the challenge.

Let's just think what would have happened if the young man had accepted, given to the poor and followed Jesus. Where would Jesus have taken him? How much more would he have been enriched? How many he could have touched with the love of God? Let's just think of Abraham, he left Ur of the Chaldeans with his family and a small flock and ended up being a rich man and the father of a whole nation through obedience. David, a shepherd of sheep who loved God so much that God himself declared that he had a heart according to that of God, he ended up being the most important king of the people of Israel.

It is important then to clarify that God, wants to give us abundance and enrich us with his blessings. He himself invites us to ask, because he is willing to give us (v 7). But for him to give us in abundance it is necessary to possess a very important characteristic. For this we will use an illustration of a container and a channel.

A container Christian is the one who comes before God to present his needs with a heart in the shape of a bucket, everything he asks for is for his own benefit, he has a heart that only asks for his personal use, his needs and his dreams. There is no room in the heart of that person to feel sorry for the need of his brothers and the more he receives from God, the more he keeps in his bucket.

On the other hand, we have the channel Christian. This is the Christian who comes before God with a God-loving heart and a disposition to complete obedience. Who recognizes that everything he has, comes from God and is from God. Who trusts in the provision of heaven and knows that he will receive what is necessary for his sustenance. He is the Christian who loves his God above all and that nothing will corrupt his personal relationship with Christ.

God treats this type of Christian differently, God blesses him above necessity and in abundance.

And why does God do it this way?

This Christian receives and instead of saving for his treasures, he puts that abundance in God's hands and when God calls him to bless others he does it with a happy heart because his love for God is greater than his love for riches. His heart is a channel that transfers blessing, not a bucket that keeps and stagnates.

Let's just think about how God works in the midst of his people. You have never received a check personally delivered by God himself. Has been a person to whom God spoke and ordered to help you. That person was the instrument of blessing. We are the physical instrument of God on earth, if we do not have a loving and willing heart, God will not give us and bless us in abundance to keep it in our banks and forget about our neighbor.

It is of utmost importance to analyze ourselves carefully, everything happens gradually. We begin to look around us and desire what the wicked has. Whether it is fame, belongings and in the vast majority of occasions wealth. All that becomes more important and we begin to put our energies and time into it and when we come to realize we have built an idol. Every idol that is getting in the way of our love for God, especially the love of wealth, takes us away from Him and, above all, saddens him.

How many times have you felt that call to help, that anxiety to do something for someone? How many times have you obeyed and acted? How many times have you done nothing? Let's not expect God to bless us a lot if we have not obeyed the little.

He loves us and is calling us to love him in the same way, if we as humans can give good gifts to our children, how much more is He willing to give us? (V 11)

Let's never forget that God is a God of principles and one of those principles is that we develop a personal relationship with Him. That we trust him. If God ordered it, he will take responsibility for all the consequences and will supply what is necessary. The closer we are to him, the more blessing we will receive. The more self-centered we are, we will continue to live in both material and spiritual scarcity. We have to stop looking at the world and stop imitating their ways of living, we are different, we do not live for the world, we live for Christ. There is no happier life than that of the one who gives everything into the hands of God, because that life has depended, waited and has lived the miracles and blessings that come through obedience and love for Christ.

A beautiful example we find is Simon the fisherman, Jesus asks him to let him use his boat to be able to preach to the crowd. After preaching, Jesus asks him to go fishing. He spent the night fishing without any success, but even tired he obeyed. He did not know the beautiful miracle that awaited him, because they caught so many fish that the nets broke and they had to call other ships. But the most beautiful thing is that from that moment Jesus changed his name, and called him Peter and made him a fisherman of men, the most important apostle of the group of disciples. Peter made it possible for the gospel of Jesus to be preached and today we can meet Christ. Tichicus, the apostle Paul assistant, no one knows anything about him. We only know that he was Paul's messenger. He was the one who took the letters to the churches. The same letters we know today in the New Testament. Had not been for him, those letters would never have been reprinted and therefore the New Testament would not exist, and today, we would not know the gospel. Obedience to something small can cause extraordinary implications.

So let's be a channel of blessing that God can use to transfer his treasures and riches and be used as instruments of his love. God will give us what we need and more, if our heart is pure and does it with love.

Now I ask:

What kind of heart do you have, a channel or a bucket?