Link to the Show / Show NotesTaken From The BookThe Law of Rewards By Permission FromRandy Alcorn.
If you have sufficient food, decent clothes, live in a home that shields you from the weather, and own some kind of reliable transportation, you're in the top 15% of the world's wealthy. Add some savings, two cars (in any condition), a variety of clothes, and your own house, and you have reached the top 5 percent. You may not feel wealthy, but that's only because you're comparing yourself to the megawealthy.
Consider someone who works from age twenty-five to sixty-five and makes only $25,000 a year. Forget the huge value of benefits provided, interest earned, pay raises, and other income sources, including inheritance or Social Security. Even without these extras, in his lifetime this person of modest income will be paid a million dollars. He will manage a fortune.
Because we all will give an account of our lives to God (Romans 14:12; 2 Corinthians 5:10), one day everyone must answer these questions:
- Where did it all go?
- What did I spend it on?
- What, if anything, did I support with it?
- What has been accomplished for eternity through the use of all this wealth?
We will be held accountable for what we do in this life, including what we do with our money. If we are generous with our possessions and faithful in our service, God will reward us beyond our imagination! If we only live for ourselves, hoarding our money and focusing on earthly comfort, we will lose the eternal rewards God had planned for us. As Christians we are saved by God's grace - but what we do in this life will matter for eternity.
In the account of the poor widow, Mark writes,"Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury"(Mark 12:41). Notice that it doesn't say,"Jesus happened to see..."No, he deliberately watched to observe what people were giving.
How close was Jesus to the offering box? Close enough to see that some people put in large amounts. Close enough even to see two tiny coins in a shriveled old hand and to identify them as copper. Jesus was interested enough in what people were giving to make an object lesson for his disciples.
This passage should make all of us who suppose that what we do with our money is our own business feel terribly uncomfortable. It's painfully apparent that God considers it his business. He does not apologize for watching with intense interest what we do with the money he's entrusted to us. If we use our imagination, we might peer into the invisible realm to seem him gathering subjects together this very moment. Perhaps you can hear him using your handling of finances as an object lesson.
The question is this: What kind of example are we?
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