Rethinking Money

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:21

Jesus talked a lot about money. In fact, he talked more about money that heaven, hell, sex, and alcohol combined. But we don’t, do we? I mean, it’s sort of uncomfortable. It’s personal. We feel guilty or competitive or embarrassed or greedy - so we avoid it.

So let’s rethink money a little bit today with Jesus. He points out in the most famous sermon ever (The Sermon on the Mount) that wherever we put our money, our heart follows after. Typically, we think of it the other way around - we love something or someone so we spend money on it or them. But Jesus flips it. Why is that?

Perhaps Jesus is onto something here. Maybe some of those big ticket items that we spend on become sort of a magnet for our souls… we get attached to them. But maybe there is a way to reverse that effect - to have the magnet not reside in the car or the house or the new TV, but in something else. What if, even for those items, we bought them ‘for the Lord’? Sure, that might sound excessively spiritual, but there are all kinds of people who dedicate their house to the Lord when they buy it - anointing doors with oil, praying over it that it would be used as a place of healing and service and refuge not only for the family but the neighborhood. And those people seem to have a lot better shot at their hearts being connected to God and to the mission of Jesus than to just a house.

Take some time today to think about where the big expenses are in your budget. Can you sense your heart connecting to those things? What might it look like for those to belong to the Lord and for your heart to connect more deeply to Christ?