WEALTH

Proverbs 3:9-10

Honor the LORD with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.

Just as God can bless us with health, he can also bless us with wealth. We all have wealth (not even counting the family and friends and memories or even the spiritual wealth that makes us rich in Christ). We all have material wealth. Granted, there are degrees of how much wealth each of us may have. But in comparison to the world, we Americans are some of the wealthiest in the world.

How do we use our wealth? – Foolishly? – Only on ourselves? – On sinful activities? – Not at all?

Solomon calls us to honor the Lord with our wealth. We honor the Lord with our wealth by giving him a first fruits offering – trusting that he will take care of all of our needs. (God does not command us in the New Testament to give back 10% of our income as he did in the Old but we are certainly free to give that percentage or even more. The Lord uses our offerings to carry out the work and ministry of the Gospel.) We honor the Lord with our wealth by using it wisely – responsibly paying our bills and by taking care of needs before wants. We honor the Lord with our wealth by using it to help others who are in need or by being generous toward those around us.

God blesses faithful, trusting, generous stewardship. In agricultural terms he promises that “then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new wine.” We don’t honor the Lord with our blessings so that he will bless us more. That’s getting it backwards. Our motivation to be faithful stewards is the love that God has shown us in Christ. But, when we do honor the Lord with our wealth, God can and does keep the promise stated here.

PRAYER: I thank you, heavenly Father, for all of the material blessings that you have given me. I pray that you would make me a wise and faithful steward of all that I have so that I may honor you, the one who owns all things, with the wealth you have given me. Amen.