Tag: Stewardship

How to Be Rich

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Everyone wants to be rich. Unfortunately, most people aren’t very good at it. We make the assumption of consumption with frightening ease, and things gradually fall apart from there. Things don’t have to be this way, though. In his first letter to his protege Timothy, Paul offered some counsel on how to be good at being rich. As we wrap up our teaching series, How Big Is Your World, we are talking today about the secret to keeping the world-shrinking assumption of consumption at bay, and living fully in the big world God has for those who trust in Him.

How to Be Rich

If you are someone who still watches major network TV series, we’re in that awkward, in-between season. All of the shows that run on the normal fall/spring cycle have been done for a couple of months now. But it’s not time for the new seasons to start just yet. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing except there aren’t really any sports to watch right now either. Football season hasn’t started. There isn’t any basketball to speak of. And baseball hasn’t gotten in the mid-September playoff chase excitement. Making things even worse is that these days when the competition is exceedingly high among the various networks and streaming services to attract and retain viewers in order to get the advertising revenue that is their lifeblood, while most series wrap up a plotline or two at the end of the season, they’ll also leave the viewers with a cliffhanger of some sort in hopes of drawing them back to find out what happens next. 

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The Assumption of Consumption

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When you get some stuff, what is your first thought about it? Do you start planning how you can use it? Save it? Give it? Where does your mind go? How we think about our stuff says a lot about us and where we are in our relationship with Jesus. It can also have a big impact on the size of the world we live in. During His ministry, Jesus was confronted with one particular man’s attitude during a teaching episode and chose to address it directly. Let’s see what Jesus had to say to Him and what it might have to do with us.

The Assumption of Consumption

Kids crack me up. If I think about it, though, kids make me a little sad too. Let me explain. Kids, and especially little kids, offer us the clearest picture we have of what people look like in our rawest form. If you have ever wondered what people are really like, spend some time watching kids. Now, this doesn’t hold universally true because some kids get messed up by their circumstances really early on, but for kids in even relatively healthy situations, they offer a window into the human soul. The reason for this is that kids really don’t have a filter. Whatever they are currently feeling is what comes out. And social conventions don’t mean a thing to them. 

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Big Living

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Living in God’s big world requires us to be generous. But what does that actually look like? Today, as we continue our series, How Big Is Your World?, we are talking about the secret to living as big as we possibly can. The key here is found in a practice that often seems like little more than a religious exercise, but has the potential to be much, much more than that if we get it right. Read on to find out what it is and how to do it.

Big Living

When I was in high school, I was in the marching band. Now, at some schools, the marching band is where all the band nerds hang out, and everybody else pretty much ignores them because they’re all really weird. At my school this was kind of the case, but not entirely. I say “not entirely” because there were 250 of us, and 250 people out of a total school population of around 2,000 is pretty hard to ignore. There were band nerds everywhere. I mean, everywhere. We came from every class and group in the school too. There were jocks, cheerleaders, traditional nerds, Goth kids, pretty kids, Christians, atheists, math nerds, the weird scholar’s bowl kids (I was one of those too), drama kids, choir kids, debaters, rednecks, preppy kids, the kids who didn’t really fit into a single category because they tended to be all over the place, and so on and so forth. The band was really the melting pot of the school, and we all got along pretty well. It didn’t hurt that my sophomore year we went to Hawaii. Things got pretty popular after that. 

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 20:15

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“Do not steal.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When you observe babies as they grow and develop, you will notice there are two beliefs about how the world should work that appear at about the same time. The first is the idea that if you have something that belongs to you, no one should be able to take it from you. Related to that is the idea that whatever you happen to have played with…or touched…or had a stray thought cross your mind about in the last year or so…belongs to you. The second idea is that if you see something that belongs to someone else, you should be able to take it because you want it more than they do. These two beliefs about how the world should work don’t go away as we get older, we simply learn that they aren’t perhaps quite so true…or at least quite so convenient to live by…as we would like them to be. As God was laying a foundation for Israel to live in a relationship with HIm, He gave them some help managing this. Let’s talk about what’s going on in commandment number eight.

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Morning Musings: Proverbs 3:9-10

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“Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine.”  (ESV)

As much as many would like and have even tried to argue this is the case, one of the things the Bible does not teach is a kind of tit-for-tat giving arrangement whereby every time we give something, God gives back to us in equal amounts.  Any preacher or teacher who has said otherwise is a snake oil salesman in disguise.  But… Read the rest…