5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
We are not to live lives that center on money. Our lives need to center on eternal things, our relationship with God and our relationships with others. As anyone who has experienced a house fire or natural disaster can tell you, at the end of the day, if your family is alive and safe, that is what matters. All the things that carry memories are not as important as the people. Those living in the Galveston, TX area can tell you following the recent Hurricane, Ike, things can easily be taken away. But it is hard in our culture of consumption to not be deceived by the glitter and sparkle of advertising. It can easily deceive us into thinking that if we get those things, we will be happy and content. But as any of us who own things know, there are always better and more ‘things.’ We must own the things; they must not own us. Things are temporary, transient objects of our attentions. They will move in and out of our lives. God will never leave, never forsake, never abandon, never lose His value. God is the stable currency in our days of instability. He won’t skip town after defrauding those who trusted in him. His portfolio doesn’t get fatter while ours gets thinner. He doesn’t take a severance package, because He is never going to leave. I am still struggling with my TV purchase. I have not made it yet. I am trying to be content. But I find if I go to Circuit City and look around, I want to buy the TV more than if I go to a park and look around. If we are constantly ‘super exposing’ our lives to the things of this world then our Thing-O-Meter will get misadjusted. If we spend time looking at websites like www.persecution.com and read the accounts, then perhaps our perspective can get adjusted to God’s perspective. Maybe it will affect how we spend our money and how much pull ‘things’ have on our lives. Contentment can be difficult when we are looking at the BMW in our neighbor’s driveway. It gets easy when we look around the world at those dying because they refuse to renounce the Name of Jesus!
The Arnold Journey 