Has God Ever Taught You?

     Reader, has God ever taught you the difference between real wealth and temporal wealth? Has He ever taught you how to accrue it, and what you are supposed to do with it? Has He ever taught you that true riches cannot rust; that real wealth cannot be stolen? What must on day be parted with cannot by truly valuable (Matthew 6:19,20).

     Has God in His infinite mercy ever taught you how to accrue real wealth? Worldly possessions cannot be kept. They are daily subjected to devaluation, fire, theft, and to a multitude of other perils. Therefore, the only way to “lay up” worldly possessions is to remove them from this temporal, perishing world. As Jim Eliot said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose!” This only is sound business management.

      Has God ever pointed out to you the many cares they subject themselves to who pursue “mammon”? Oh, the pride, the arrogance, and selfishness of such a life! They pierce “themselves through with many sorrows” (I Timothy 6:10). Worry hounds them.

     Has God ever taught you to set your affections on “things above, not on things on the earth” (Colossians 3:2)? Has He ever taught you why you are to do it – that “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:21)? Then, beware of the contamination of your affections by your possessions. Instead, “be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (I Corinthians 15:58). “For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love which you have showed toward His name in that ye have ministered to the saints and do minister” (Hebrews 6:10).

      God judges the materialist to be a fool because 1.) He mistakes his body for his soul; 2.) He mistakes time for eternity and 3.) He mistakes himself for God (Luke 12:15-21). They who are like him believe that “gain is godliness” (I Timothy 6:5), and like profane Esau, they barter eternal prosperity for temporal prosperity. So does everyone who makes this life his concern, and is not rich toward God.

     Has God ever been pleased to teach you that a man’s comfort and happiness do not depend upon what he possesses? God has graciously ordained that even a poor man may be a happy man.

    Has God ever taught you to walk by faith and not by sight? Has He taught you not to labor for the “gold that perishes” (I Peter 1:17), but to labor that you may be “rich in faith” (James 2:5)? “Rich in good works” (I Timothy 6:18)? Rich in Wisdom? Rich in grace? Has God ever taught you to labor “that you may have to give to him that needeth” (Ephesians 4:28)?

 

Back