Honor In Wealth

Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty.  Proverbs 3:9-10

Honoring the Lord with your wealth involves several things.  

• We are asked to return a tithe (10%) back to his work through the church
• We are asked to take care of the needs of our own household first    1 Timothy 5:8
• We are asked to get and stay out of debt (more on this in a future post)
• We are asked to help others (only the strong can help the weak)
• ...among other things

Despite all the negative teachings about money that are shown throughout our society, Christians ARE NOT called to be broke.  In fact, quite the opposite is true.  The natural by-product of managing your money based on a biblical foundation is becoming wealthy.  

Think about it.  If you stop spending more than you make, live your life based on a budget, sacrifice some short term comfort to become debt free, build an emergency fund and save for the future...what do you think is going to happen?  Do you really think intentionally doing all these things on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis will cause you to be broke?

Every time I tell our story of paying off our debt after college ($12,000 student loan paid off in 2 months), I get the same question.  "How did you do that?!"  I have to answer the same every time.  "I really don't know,  I think I remember eating those two months."  The truth is, we didn't make enough money to pay off $6,000 a month for 2 months.  The only thing I can say is that God blesses efforts that line up with his teachings.

I'm a Dad of two crazy kids now.  When they are doing something that makes me proud, I want to shower them with praise, gratitude and, sometimes, gifts.  On the other hand, when they are acting in ways that I don't approve of, it makes me want to withhold those same things.  

God is our Dad (Heavenly Father), right?  We were made in his image, right (Gen 1:27)?  This means that our Dad is proud of us when we do good things and disappointed in us when we don't quite measure up.  

When we honor our Dad with our wealth, he rewards us with peace, comfort and, sometimes, gifts.

Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty.  Proverbs 3:9-10