Are my decisions based on God’s will or money?

24 “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

INSIGHT:  This teaching is the central theme of my personal story.  I chased the “good life” and got it but felt completely torn between my love for God and success.  I suffered major internal tension and a lack of peace for 18 months. I was experiencing exactly what Jesus is warning about.  Money was choking my relationship with Him, and His mission in my life, because I was trying to serve two masters.

A minister once pointed out that Jesus had just commanded us not to store up treasures on earth (Mat 6:19-21), and then in between that money teaching and the one above, He took an odd break to teach about having good eyes, so your body is full of light (Mat 6:22-23).  His conclusion was that Jesus is likely teaching that you cannot have good spiritual eyes of understanding until you properly see money as God sees it.  I think he is spot on.  Money is so often the number one false god and competitor our heart, in God’s eyes, and we need only look to the story of the rich young man in Mat 19, to see that.

Shortly after losing everything in 2010, I was walking down the street crying because I only had $23 to my name.  I remembered that picture of me with the check for $250k and all the money I earned.  I felt like a total failure, never to be useful to God again.  As I walked in tears, I heard the Spirit say to me, “You are far more useful to me right now, with the $23, than you ever were with the $250k.”  I was encouraged to hear from God, but I could not yet fully understand what He was saying because my spiritual eyes were still dark in that way.

What does it mean to serve money?  It means you are making decisions based on financial outcomes rather than God’s guidance and will.  Instead of seeking God’s direction and waiting on Him, you live exactly like the world and carnal “Christians” do.  From heaven’s perspective, money is your god, and it has more influence in your day-to-day decisions than God does.  Most professing Christians are serving money because it is so engrained in our sin nature to do so, and because they don’t really trust God.  Ask yourself honestly, are your major decisions being dictated by God’s will, or by financial outcomes?  What does the data say in your life, about who is pulling your chain the most and therefore who your true master is?

One time, in 2012, I desperately needed money.  A year earlier I had said no to a $150k job offer because God asked me to.  This time, I had been offered $25k worth of video work, and I really needed the financial relief.  I prayed, and God told me “no” yet again.  He sorely tested me to see if I would faithfully serve Him or money, because for my whole life I had served money.  I was resolved to serve God, not money, no matter the cost, with God’s help. 

I used to view money as something I needed to save up, invest, and accumulate because that is what the world teaches us to do from a young age.  I would then subconsciously trust in that pile of money to meet my needs, or to save me out of trouble.  I could never have seen it then, but money was my master.  When you enter the deeper Spiritual life with God, living more and more by faith in Him for all things, money simply becomes a pass-through resource from the Lord to meet your basic needs, to help others, and to grow the kingdom.  You lose the desire to acquire it, accumulate it, or to manage it, and there is deep contentment even without it (1 Tim 6:6). You begin to look to the bank of heaven, rather than your earthly bank.  You realize that at any time, even on a fixed income, if a need arises which God agrees is a need, you will find your needs met every single time, by faith (Phi 4:16).  

In two months, it will be 12 years that I have been living entirely by faith for God to meet my finances.  He has never failed me a single time in 12 years!  In the last 3.5 years of our marriage, Lisa has never once seen me worry about money. God knows we cannot be worried about money and serve Him at the same time.