Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters; either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon (money)”, Matthew 6:24. This is a choice each one must make as individuals, communities and even nations.
A few years ago I was tested in this, when the economy took a turn for the worst, and panic gripped me. I knew God’s promises and claimed to believe them, yet my actions proved a heart filled with fear of “what ifs” in loss of income and value. When I finally realized my time was spent more on thinking about bills than God, it hit me that I’d given myself over to worshipping mammon.
God’s first Commandment says, “you shall not put other gods before Me”. And when we devote more of our time and energy thinking about money, it becomes more important than God, and becomes our god. Our first priority in life than becomes attaining financial success, so in effect we are building the kingdom of this world first.
But Jesus said, “seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and ALL these things will be given to you” Matthew 6:33. So how do we do that? We can start by finding out what God’s purpose for our life really is. And how do we know? We can search out who we really are, what our gifts are, our talents and passions. Not in superficial things, but talents that feel natural to us, this is where God can use us most. Then we need to get trained up in those areas.
Finally, we have to step out, and whatever the talent is, find the best place to use them for the benefit of others, starting with those around us and where we have the most influence. Then before we know it, our priority focus will shift from making money to doing good works. Money will then take it’s rightful place as a useful tool to fulfill God’s Kingdom purpose for our lives and will come in as and when needed.
By changing our priorities from Earth’s to Heaven’s, our lives will not only be more rewarding and exciting, but the most important thing will be the Lord’s answer to us when we stand before Him on Judgement Day to settle accounts. Jesus said we’ll only receive one of two answers on that day, and we have the opportunity to choose now what that will be: He will either say, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many. Enter into the joy of your Lord”. Or He will say, “You wicked and lazy servant…cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”, Matthew 25.
We can see how crucial it is to use what God has given us wisely and to change our focus from trusting mammon to trusting God. Some may say they don’t believe this applies to them, but what if Jesus is actually telling the truth and it does?
Others say "we are saved by grace and not by works". It’s true we can only have eternal life through faith in Jesus alone and not through anything we do, since He said, “no one comes to the Father except through Me”. But it’s our works that reveal whether we really believe Jesus enough to follow Him as He said, “if anyone loves Me, he will follow My commands”, John 14:21-24.
A good example is the thief on the cross who hadn’t done anything good in life, and only pardoned in his last moments. Yet he was allowed into Paradise, and with his dying request to follow Jesus, his words became a witness for Christ these 2000 years, every time we read the crucifixion story.
So we need to ask ourselves, “Who do we love?" Then get our priorities in order and serve that one first.
Olga Hermann
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