Karen still remembers the exact amount. I came home from work that day in 1990, to her and our then three little girls, and told her that a woman had come into my office unable to pay her rent so I had loaned her $242 to help pay it.
“You did what?” Karen asked, thinking of our own meager budget and our need for groceries and our need to pay the bills. I told her again, and she was filled with disbelief and was not just a little angry.
It was that day that I learned it was best to get her buyin to large financial decisions (and that was one) before making them. The reality is this: when she has an opportunity to have buyin, then, she has the joy of giving as well.
I have regretted it every time I have not done this.
As Karen predicted that night, we never saw that money paid back. It took a tight couple months to recover with us limping along. It was years later that I learned how my own mythical thinking about money, my own poor budgeting, and my own lack of boundaries kept us strapped. God provides and when we honor Him with our finances, He blesses us with the ability to be good stewards of all He has provided. Then we can give!
Paul wrote to the young pastor Timothy to instruct those rich in this world how to view money or wealth. His instructions are timeless. Truly, even when we were strapped financially in San Jacinto, we were still among the rich of this world, the most wealthy. We would have done well to heed his advice.
He told Timothy to warn them not to be proud (not to trust in their wealth); Trust in God and use their money to do good; To be rich in good deeds (always being willing to share with others). Paul wanted those who were rich to be generous-hearted, people who gave and gave freely. He warned Timothy that those who craved wealth, who loved money, have pierced themselves with many hurts, even fallen from faith. It was a message written to be delivered to people living in Ephesus in the first century but could easily have been written for us, today. All of us, no matter our incomes, are easily among the wealthiest of the world, living in the wealthiest of nations.
To see money not as what we “have” but as what we “have been given” is a start. It is to agree that all wealth, even if we earned it by our efforts, or by saving diligently, still is granted by God. God said this to the Israelites after leaving Egypt to beware of forgetting Him when they became wealthy, saying that, “He is the one who gave you the power to earn wealth…” (Deuteronomy 8:18). What Paul wrote to Timothy was entoned previously by God through Moses there in Deuteronomy 8.
Money is curious. It is simply a means of commerce, yet, it can grab our hearts, it can give us a sense of power over others, and become something we crave more of. It can be dangerous that way. Heeding God’s warnings is helpful to undercut the ways money can have in our lives for it tends to grab our hearts.
This week we will be looking at Paul’s advice to Timothy and listening for how God is speaking to us today. We will also recall how John Wesley used money in his era, even when making what today would be $160,000 a year, Wesley chose to live on what was equivalent to $20,000 per year and gave the rest away. Wesley wrote that his own hands would be his executors -- he would give while he lived. And he did. He died penniless other than the money needed for his funeral.
If you cannot make it, ponder: How am I a steward of all God has given me?
In what ways do I guard against money gaining access to my heart?
How do I practice Wesley’s advice to “Gain all you can; Save all you can; Give all you can.”?