As a family, the Oaks, is talking about issues surrounding money for the next week or so. Our elders provided us with a very helpful book by Jamie Munson from Mars Hill called, Money: God or Gift? As I have been thinking a lot about my issues with money or rather the sins that are revealed through the way I handle my money, I’ve been realizing all of it comes down to this. I waver in trusting the goodness of God. I’m justified. That is, God declared me right with Him. All of the sin that covers me relating to money. It’s gone. Now Christ’s righteousness, particularly in this case, how he handled His money (or the resources God gave Him as a means to glorify Him)- COVERS ME and the sinful ways I can handle mine. I was reading a post by Jani Ortlund- it reads as follows:
Worry eats at us. It mires our hearts in apprehension and fear. It saps our strength and drains our peace. And that worry tempts us to believe the myth that an uncertain financial future is an unbearable state of affairs.
–In Matthew six, Jesus speaks to people who had no IRAs or savings accounts to calm their fears about their future. And yet Jesus looks them straight in the eye and calls them to a worry-free faith. Why? Because a Father who takes such excellent care of His birds and flowers will surely provide His children with all they need.
Are you strapped financially these days? Do you find yourself fussing over your earthly needs as if you didn’t belong to the One who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field? Your Father knows and cares abut our needs. He assures us of His fatherly protection. That means we are free to go about God’s business today and leave tomorrow with Him. “Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all” Matthew 6:32.
Imagine my going into our son’s room to kiss him goodnight only to find him crying fitfully into his pillow. When I question him, he tells me that he’s afraid he’ll be thirsty tomorrow and what will he do? I almost laugh at his worry, but instead I calmly assure him that if I water our houseplants— silly houseplants that sometimes die after only a few months—then of course I will make sure that my precious, darling, beloved child has enough water to drink! A loving parent delights in providing for his child.
I don’t know your needs right now. You may be jobless. You may be facing rising medical costs. You may not know where next month’s rent will come from. But wherever you are, let’s believe God together for our needs, not because we are oblivious to reality but because we are related to True Reality. Our loving Father calls us to leave our financial brooding and settle down with child-like trust in Him.
One of my favorite old hymns says it this way:
Only be still and wait His leisure
In cheerful hope, with heart content.
To take whate’er the Father’s pleasure
And all-discerning love has sent;
Nor doubt our inmost wants are known
To Him who chose us for His own.
George Neumark, 1621-1681–
What a great comfort. Paul in his letter to the Romans church says this -Romans 8:31-32 “31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things”
God! Help me press into that! You gave me Jesus. Your Treasure and Joy. Your Eternal Companion. Your own SON. Logically, how can anything happen, except that you fill me with joy and satisfy me forever? What a wondrously amazing Portion are You?
