*GOD, NOT MONEY*
Live Daily Footstool Devotional
Luke 16:13 NIV
“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 .”
Nothing can interrupt your ministry( service), love and devotion to God like the love of money can. The Bible says, “You cannot serve God and money”. The three important ways we can interact with either God or Money are through love, devotion or service/ ministry/ occupation according to today’s opening scripture. Love, devotion and service.
Money is a master just as much as God is a master. Master means lord. Just the same way God can become the one you give your attention to , to love and serve, money is also a person or something you become attracted to, give your attention to and to serve it. Don’t serve money; it has a way of looking like God himself, but don’t be fooled by it’s ability to supply all you may need. God and Money are not the same, and the Christian journey and discipleship has its aim in helping you decipher the two. One can save you, the other can kill you.
Money may be able to supply what you need, but it doesn’t have the power to save and give eternal life. Money that does not save you but gives you freedom to engage in all sorts of acts of the flesh, making you feel you cannot be restricted in anyway, is Mammon indeed, and will only lead you to hell eventually. When Money or Mammon ( as the King James Version puts it) is your Lord or master, you get a stupid feeling that you can have whatever you want, even if it doesn’t please God. These stupid feelings lead you into the acts of the flesh, and you engage in them without apologising for them, because you feel you are supposed to have whatever you want. Do you realise that immediately you lay hold on some good amount of money, all sorts of ideas begin to flood your mind that were never there before, perhaps?Do you realise that when your receive some cash, it makes you feel you can have this and that and that without consulting anyone? Money, or Mammon is actually foolishness; it makes you live as if there is no God.
God is different in the sense that when you serve Him well, He leads you into wealth, but not in the sense that it makes you so liberal to engage in whatever foolish act you may want to engage in because of your stupid feeling that you are free to have anything you want. You are not as free to have whatever you want as you think. Don’t wait until Judgement Day to discover that you are not the owner of your own life and that you are not free to have anything you want, even if it is against God’s rules for you.
Galatians 5:19-24 NIV
The acts of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; [20] idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions [21] and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God. [22] But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, [23] gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. [24] Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
God is Wisdom and not Money. Serving God has the advantage of giving you money and more importantly, saving you as well. Money or Mammon or Satan gives you mere cash and along with it, a stupid feeling that you can have whatever you want so long as it pleases you. But Money does not save you from hell. Wisdom does. Wisdom gives you cash and something even better, your own salvation and that of several others. Now you tell me, which one is better? Wisdom or Money?
Ecclesiastes 7:11-12 KJVS
Wisdom is good with an inheritance: and by it there is profit to them that see the sun. [12] For wisdom is a defence, and money is a defence: but the excellency of knowledge
