02/06/2023
By Pastor Vinnie Cappetta
"God and Money"
I don’t know about you, but when our family gets to the end of a pay period, we start to run out of money until I get paid again. It happens with such regularity, you’d think I would have figured out by now how to trust God to provide for us, but I always seem to need God to remind me He is in charge.
God understands how important money is in the process of meeting our needs. He knows it is a great servant but a terrible master. If I am depending on the “almighty” dollar to get me through the month, I am going to be sorely disappointed.
Pastor Joe preached recently on Hebrews 13:5… “Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you, nor for sake you.”
At the end of the month especially, I am brought face to face with the following questions:
Do I love money more than I love God?
Do I trust more in my money than I trust in God?
Can I be content with what I have for now, or do I need to purchase something to fulfill me?
The simple but not easy answer is for me to see that God is with me even when finances are tight. My money may have fled to the far corners of the economy, but my Provider has not left me. He has promised not to forsake me. In God I can trust.
Henri Nouwen speaks to this topic…
The pressure in our culture to secure our own future and to control our lives as much as possible does not find support in the Bible. Jesus knows our need for security. Because it is such a deep human need, he is concerned that we not place our trust in things or people that cannot offer us real security. "Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and thieves can break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworm destroys them and thieves cannot break in and steal. For wherever your treasure is, there will your heart be too" (Matt. 6:19-21, NIB). We cannot find security if our heart is divided. So Jesus says something very radical: "No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or be attached to the first and despise the second. You cannot be the slave both of God and of money" (Luke 16:13, NIB). What is our security base? God or money? That is what Jesus would ask. He says that we cannot put our security in God and also in money. We have to make a choice. Jesus counsels: "Put your security in God." We have to make a choice whether we want to belong to the world or to God. Our trust - our basic trust - Jesus teaches, has to be in God.
- Henri J. M. Nouwen, A Spirituality of Fundraising
