- (NIV) Of what use is money in the hand of a fool, since he has no desire to get wisdom?
- Luke 12: 18-20 (NLT) "So he said, `I know! I'll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I'll have room enough to store everything. And I'll sit back and say to myself, 'My friend, you have enough stored away for years to come. Now take it easy! Eat, drink, and be merry!' "But God said to him, `You fool! You will die this very night. Then who will get it all?'"
- James 4:13-15 (NLT) Look here, you people who say, "Today or tomorrow we are going to a certain town and will stay there a year. We will do business there and make a profit." How do you know what will happen tomorrow? For your life is like the morning fog--it's here a little while, and then it's gone. What you ought to say is, "If the Lord wants us to, we will live and do this or that."
- Matthew 6: 19 (NIV) "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal."
Wealth cannot buy wisdom: wisdom can however, result in wealth. Wisdom at its very least drives living life God's way. Just as money cannot buy happiness, it cannot buy wisdom, nor would it probably want to even consider the purchase of wisdom as today's verse suggests. God's ways are not the ways of the world. Believers are called to a different world: to a different way of living. It matters little whether we are a butcher, baker or candlestick maker. What does matter is that whatever we do, we do it with a heart for wisdom.
Those who are single-minded in growing wealth for themselves are not treated kindly in Scripture (Luke and James passages). Those verses dramatically shift our focus from ourselves to others. Whatever God gives us we are to give back to him by our consideration for those with less than we have.
What wealth we have does not last forever - and Paul reminds us that we "brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it." (I Tim 6:7) It is what we do with what we have gained that God looks at.
Paul, whose heart was dramatically changed, whose wealth suddenly meant nothing to him, wanted all Believer to gain Wisdom - a new insight into what counts in life: (Eph 1:18) "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints..." It is the riches of our inheritance that we should be focusing on.
So, how does a person own or running a business do all this? Does it mean we give up our livelihood to become Pauline Missionaries? I think not. What we are called to is a heart change: an understanding of whom it is that provides all that we have; a commitment to use what we have, where we are, and what we do for His glory, not our own. It's not about giving money: it is an attitude of the heart translated into the actions of our life.
God's ways are not man's ways: to which way are you committed?
Copyright © 2006 by P. Griffith Lindell
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