Saturday, November 10, 2018

November 11, 2018

No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money."  Matthew 6:24

Perhaps you will find these factoids interesting:

* Jesus talked about money more than He did Heaven and Hell combined.
* Jesus talked about money more than anything else except the Kingdom of God.
* 11 of 39 parables talk about money.
* 1 of every 7 verses in the Gospel of Luke talk about money.

The Word Money is actually used in connection with Jesus (whether He uses the word or it is used in connection with Him) approximately 25 times throughout the 4 Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Did Jesus talk about money because it is important or is money important because Jesus talked so much about it?

The answer is, "Yes!"

When you look at your money it says, "In God we trust" would it be more accurate to say "in money I trust"?

Jesus implies in this Scripture that trusting money is your default setting and unless you make a conscious decision and take some deliberate actions, money will be your master. Essentially, unless you reject money and materialism as your god, they will rule your life.

What makes money so powerful?

The short answer is that it can meet some powerful felt needs in a tangible way. Those needs, two such needs are the need for significance and the need for security. Having money and holding it and knowing you have more stashed away feels good. And the more you have the greater your sense of significance and security.

But God is the one who built those needs into you and they are shaped like Him. Money can give you some significance but what amount of money is more significant than God? And there is security in a good savings account and good insurance and a healthy 401K, but any or all of those can be lost overnight. The best you can hope for is a lifetime of significance and security but then what? What happens after that? God can make you secure forever!

Money is good, but God is better!

It might be a good time to do some honest soul-searching to examine where your trust resides. Is God your Master or is it money?



November 10, 2018

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will." Romans 12:1-2

D. L. Moody is a great example of what can happen when a man commits to partner with God. One plus one may equal two in the realm of mathematics. But when one man with His God it doesn’t double, it multiplies. And not only does it multiply but it compounds!

Moody was born in a very poor New England family in 1837. They were already poor when his father died at the age of 41 their creditors came and took all they had except the clothes on their backs. They even took the fire wood stacked behind the house. When their mother took them to church and S.S., they were so poor she didn’t want to wear out their shoes and socks so she would have them go barefoot and carry their shoes and socks until they go within sight of the church when they would put them on and go into church.

When he was old enough, Moody landed a job as a shoe salesman and became one of the top shoe salesman on the East Coast. He became friends with a fellow shoe salesman by the name of Edward Kimball. Kimball was a Christian who often witnessed to Moody. One day, Kimball led Moody to the Lord in a back room of the shoe store.

Soon after becoming converted, Moody came across a quote by Henry Varley that challenged him and profoundly changed his life. The quote was, “The world is yet to see what God will do with, for, through, in and by a man fully consecrated to Him.” Moody decided he wanted to be that man, so after being denied membership in his local church who considered him too unpolished, he recruited 18 rowdies off the street and began teaching a Bible class with them. Two years later that class had grown to 1,500!

During his lifetime this rough, raw and unpolished man shared the gospel with 100,000,000 people!

In the case of D.L. Moody ONE + one equaled 100 million when he partnered with God. But that was not the full extent of the partnership with God. What began with a shoe salesman who dared to partner with God and share his faith with a co-worker in the back of a shoe store didn't end there:

·         Sunday School teacher Edward Kimball lead Dwight L. Moody to Christ;

·         J. Wilbur Chapman was converted at a D. L. Moody evangelistic meeting;re

·         Billy Sunday was converted at a Chapman meeting;

·         Mordecai Ham was converted at Billy Sunday meeting;

·    And Billy Graham was converted at a Ham rally!

On December 22, 1899, the evangelist D. L. Moody lay dying. His first job had been as a shoe clerk in Boston, gathering eighteen ragged boys off the street to organize a Sunday school class. In two years the class had grown to fifteen hundred. In his lifetime Moody was to take two continents in his hands and shake them for God. As he died, he left this epitaph written on the flyleaf of his Bible, “If God be your partner, make your plans big."

What big thing could you partner with God  for if you were fully consecrated to Him?