Check the title household account book.
“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the good and despise the other, for you cannot serve both God and riches.” (Matthew 6:24)
Using the parable of the master and the servant, Jesus divided the values of the believer in two very simply and clearly. A slave, of course, belongs to one master, and never belongs to two masters, he listens only to his master. Likewise, the believer is a servant of the master who is God and should serve only Him.
However, the strange thing is that if any other master who contrasts with God is called wealth, it must be Satan. How refreshing would it be if Jesus said, “You cannot serve both God and Satan”? Look at the students and study hard, it's like telling the soldiers to fight well. It's too sensible to say, but it doesn't really impress or pierce the believer. No believer, not even an unbeliever, is willing to serve Satan himself. They are just being deceived by Satan, the father of lies.
Then, it means that the most effective and powerful weapon for Satan to deceive believers is riches, and furthermore, Satan gives them money. Of course, wealth itself is not Satan. Whether riches are scarce or plentiful, they are more precisely focused on what is lacking or overflowing, so that believers stop serving God, and when this happens, they fall into Satan's machinations.
A servant always knows what his master wants and cares about how to make it fit his needs. The ministers are the king, the ministers are the president, and the employees are the bosses. Sometimes, even if he doesn't really care for his owner, he at least tries to stay out of his eyes. This is because the master controls his life, his life, and even his life. Therefore, to know how much a servant cares for his master, you can look at the servant's usual actions, words, and thoughts.
A believer should check whether his thoughts are flowing toward money or God, especially when he is not doing anything special. You have to look at what comes to mind naturally when your mind is empty. You have to be honest and look at your inner self completely to see if you are worried about money, whether you want to please God, or at least not do what God hates.
Of course, there are many things that need money to live on this earth. Almost everything has to do with money. That is why money is so important and essential. It brings convenience to life and a means to achieve something. As a believer, you can never stop worrying about money.
However, most people are unaware of the fact that problems can be solved in some form whether they are concerned or not, even whether they have money or not. If you have a lot of money, you have a lot, and if you don't have enough money, you will have an end to the problem.
Also, there is no way that the happiness you wished for having a lot of money would end in the unhappiness you did not want because of the lack of money. It means that money is not the real way to solve the problem. There are so many more problems in life that money cannot solve. The only thing money can solve is eating three meals a day and getting dressed.
Furthermore, in the end, whether money leaves us, we leave money. Because ultimately all human beings come and return naked. Money is by no means a measure of a person's worth. It is another matter of how much value, meaning, and joy in your life and in your life, the various benefits that money achieves. Among the results that money can produce and the fruits that can be achieved without money, the latter is more valuable in most cases.
Regardless of money, problems will eventually end, and money does not solve all problems, and furthermore, the fact that money does not have much value means that the disadvantages and pain caused by the lack of money are not real problems in life. Therefore, if the inconvenience caused by lack of money keeps appearing as a real big problem, it has fallen into Satan's deception.
The proof is that even when real problems are solved with money, even one's heart is not clean. What was solved with money was not a fundamental problem, but only the worries that had been bothering me, saying, "It's a big deal because I don't have money.." This is an inevitable consequence because money was not the essence of the problem from the beginning. The underlying problem still remains unresolved.
So, even if the inconveniences and disadvantages of reality have been resolved, there is no inner peace in human beings, and there are more cases of anxiety and emptiness. Also, the pain at that time hurts much more than the actual physical pain. This is because humans, unlike all other animals, value inner joy more than outward prosperity. Because God made human beings to resemble His image, believers and unbelievers alike have no choice but to do so.
Being made to resemble God's image means that humans will naturally follow what God likes and dislikes, no matter how corrupt their souls are due to original sin, to some extent. But would God cry and laugh because of money? In fact, can't everyone realize the truth that money does not determine good or bad luck, even if the level of conviction is different?
The root cause of human misfortune is God. We can never be happy without relying on Him who made us and directs all of our life's paths. On the other hand, Satan's fundamental goal is to keep humans away from God. So it makes people think of the root cause of their misfortunes as wealth instead of God. Money seems to be the biggest problem, and it keeps causing money-related problems to stick to it. In other words, all human thoughts are ultimately directed toward either God or wealth (Satan).
Writer George Burtrick said, "Of all the masters the soul can choose, in the end there are only two masters left: God and money. All the choices, no matter how trivial or disguised as different, are just variations of these two choices.” Even a believer who works for any good and righteous cause, the true inner world is both God and money. It is a battle over who will be the master among them.
One-third of all Gospel parables and one-sixth of the Gospels talk about money management. It is not an ethical commandment for believers to keep their credit and manage their money thoroughly and honestly. Even for a believer, the proportion of money in their life is as large as that of God.
Which master are you serving now? Godfrey Davis, author of the Duke of Wellington's biography, said: "I found an old ledger showing how the Duke spent his money. It gave a much better clue as to what he actually valued than reading his letters or speeches. "He said. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). You don't even need to pray and meditate to quickly check your mind right now. All you need to do is check your checkbook or your household expenses.
Isn't it quite natural that God's poverty in life is far worse than the poverty of the wallet, and conversely, that the poverty of the wallet is not more important than the poverty of God? Even so, isn't it rather strange that a famous believer can forget God or focus more on wealth because of the poverty of his wallet?
6/18/2006