Money is essential to help us survive. We need money to help us pay our bills and for things, we need and want. It is completely okay to love money. Heck, I would love to receive a quarter of a million dollars right now in my bank account. Most people love receiving money. But there comes a point in your heart where you know you are giving love, praise and lots of time to money and the pursuit of it.

In Matthew 6:24, Jesus says: "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money." Jesus makes a very good point here. When the pursuit of making money becomes more important than your relationship with God, you will grow to hate and despise God.

How would you grow to hate and despise God? When things go wrong in life, people are so quick to blame God for their suffering, They don't realize that things are going wrong because Satan is controlling your life. Sometimes God makes bad things happen to you because you need discipline. Say hypothetically, you go to a grocery store and steal a loaf of bread. You know stealing is wrong, but you go against your moral judgment and steal the bread anyway. You eventually get caught and are arrested for shoplifting, and you have to sit in jail until you can bond yourself out or serve the time to get out.

The jail sentence in the example above is God's discipline towards you. He made you get caught and thrown in jail to teach you to not steal things again. In Hebrews 12:6, it says "For the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives." He disciplined you because you did wrong. God is exactly like a parent is to their sons or daughters. Your parents discipline you to teach you right from wrong, right? Why do they discipline you? It is because they want you to learn from the mistakes you made and to work hard to make sure you don't make the same mistake twice. Why do they do this? It is because they love you too much for you to keep doing wrong.

The same applies to God. God loves us so much that He doesn't want us to keep digging the same perpetual rabbit hole for ourselves and not be able to get out of it. People think bad circumstances happen because God hates them. This is far from the truth. God allows human suffering for different reasons, all of them being good and glorifying to Him. Sometimes He allows suffering to help you get closer to Him, not because you did something wrong.

How do you know that you are serving money more than God? A personal example from my life is going to answer that question. Someone in my family became obsessed with having and spending money so much that money became more important than family relationships. Money became their god. They didn't care how much pain they were putting on me because they couldn't see past the money and into my heart and my feelings. Because this person made money more important than the love they had for me, I have grown to resent them. I resent them so much so that I prioritize God, my family, and the love I have for them above the money I make at my two part-time jobs.

If you are currently serving money, it's never too late to turn to God. Turning to God provides so much joy to your life that you could never get with money. Sure, you can get stuff you want with the money, but can you get lasting happiness and so much love with money. Can you get people who will help you in your faith and be by your side to support you through life with money? No, you can't. God is love and He loves us so much to help us.

I leave you with a passage from 1 John 3:16-18. 1 John 3:16-18 says this: "This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

Let us love the Lord and each other instead of loving the things of this world.

God bless,

Matt Hasty