For the past several months I am slowly making my way through Kyle Idleman’s book “gods at war: Defeating the Idols that Battle for Your Heart”. Mr. Idleman writes about several different “idols” that can easily take God’s place in our hearts and how we need to keep our eyes and hearts focused on God.
In the latest chapter I have read, Idleman talks about the god of money. He says,
The reason money so often ends up being God’s chief competition is that we tend to ascribe divine attributes to it. We look to money to do for us the very thing God wants to do for us.
In this chapter, he is talking about the parable in Luke 12:16-19.
And he told a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample good laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink and be merry.’
Idleman continues and gives us three attributes that we have a tendency to place on money instead of God.
Our Source of Security
The gods of power work for one shared premise: we can take care of ourselves. We can handle all our needs. The Lord is nice, but he really isn’t necessary. We don’t need to pray for our daily bread because we’ve got a pantry full of it. The gods of success appeal to our self-sufficiency.
Our Source of Satisfaction
Most all of us have this appetite for money or possessions. And we think that if we could satisfy this appetite it would go away – if we could just make the money or buy the car – but that’s not how it works. Instead, the more you feed it, the hungrier it gets.
Our Source of Significance
The god of money wants us to believe that our significance comes from what we make of ourselves. But we find out true identity in Christ. He has marked us as his own, and that’s what makes us valuable. That’s where our value is found. He forever determined our value when he died on the cross for us. But when we worship the god of money, a person’s worth is determined not by the symbol of the cross, but by the symbol of a dollar sign.
The rich man in Luke 12 put his trust in his money and possessions. The sad part is that the he thought that he would build larger barns and then just sit back and relax and enjoy the rest of his life in ease. That is not what happened. If we continue to read the next few verses, we see God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you and the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rise toward God.
Points To Ponder:
- How do you view money?
- Is the money you do have your’s or God’s?
- Is money your source of security, your source of satisfaction & your source of significance?
Matthew 6:21 – “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.
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