OUR COMMON FAITH - Money The Answer To All Things
by Pastor Ron Gatrelle
"A feast is made for laughter and wine makes merry; but money answers all things." (Ecclesiastes 10:19).
I remember the first time I read that verse and how it surprised me that the Bible actually said money was the answer to everything. I had, like many of us, been steeped in the attitude that money was bad, the root of all evil, and to be avoided at all cost.
After a period of confusion and examination of scripture, the Biblical place of money in relation to our common faith came into proper focus.
Money is referred to as "filthy" (l Timothy 3:3), yet we are instructed to "make friends" of it and use it as a tool (Luke 16:9). There is no contradiction here if we understand that money in and of itself is not evil (Romans 14:14). It is the love of money in which the filth and evil lies (l Timothy 6:10).
How we view money, feel about money, and what we are willing to do to get money is what must be examined… not money itself.
With the proper attitude money becomes a valuable and indispensable tool in applying our common faith in the real world. To demonstrate our faith by feeding the poor, printing a Bible or building a place of worship takes money.
Our common faith can not effectively touch our world spiritually or physically without the tool of money. Money is the answer to all things for with enough of it you could do almost anything. We are indeed to make friends with this filthy mammon. The only problem is that all too often Christians, especially preachers, get to be too good of friends with and too dependent upon this tool. When this occurs, it results in the beg-for-bucks approach with which we are all too familiar.
What I see in all of this is that it is easy for money to become the object of our faith rather than Christ. It becomes easy for us to look toward money as our source or the answer to problems rather than looking toward Christ. Money is the answer to all things, but Christ is our answer.
The very fact that money does solve so many problems is probably why God has NOT allowed most of His children to have much of it. For if we had money, we would look to it rather than to God as our answer. Money is something we all need but few can handle.
Let us make a concerted effort to keep a proper attitude toward money so that God might entrust us with more of it to help others and proclaim our common faith.