Do your dreams of the future only come true if more money is in the picture?
• Do you ever get up early for money? Stay up late to make or worry about money issues?
• Do you invest time and energy growing your money? Compare the amount spent “raising” your money versus the amount of time raising your own children. How much time do you spend making money? How much time is left over for your spouse and kids?
I told you that it would be painful!
Actions speak louder than words, so let’s take a look at common actions and you can discern for yourself where your love is.
Show Me the Money
When I go into a church or speak to a group of believers, they love to tell me that money is not the most important thing. I couldn’t agree more, so I recently asked a men’s group, what is the first question you have asked, or plan on asking, your daughter’s fiancé when he asks for her hand in marriage? Do you know what the most common answer is across the Western world of believers? It is not “How long have you been walking with the Lord?” It is not “Do you have a plan on leading my daughter and grandchildren in their spiritual walk?” Do you know what the number-one question Christian/Jewish/Muslim fathers ask? Keep in mind that these are fathers who are believers, fathers who will tell you in a heartbeat that money is not the most important thing. They ask, “How do you plan on providing for my daughter?” Not even, “How do you know you love my daughter enough to be her husband?” Nope, the first question around the world is focused on money.
The number-one question is focusing on an issue that we tell ourselves is not the most important thing? Obviously, there is a problem.
Do you know what the second question often is? “How big of a wedding are you thinking of having?”
Sadly, when asking nonbelievers what their first question would be, I get, “When do you plan on having the wedding?” Again, not what I would think would be the most important, but a much better question than that of most believers! Not that the question of provision is not important—it is, which is why I wrote this book—but to a believer, questions like, “How long have you been a believer?” “Do you have a good prayer life?” “How long have you been going to church?” “What church do you go to?” all would be a better place to start when talking to the man who plans on marrying your daughter.
Believers, for a bunch of people who claim to not love money, sure are greed focused. Therein lies the problem: We don’t really know what greed is.
Pretend for a minute that you are not reading this book and answer the following question honestly. Or, better yet, think of the people you know; how would they answer the following question?
“If you were to get a 10 percent raise at work, what would you do with the money?”
The most common answers I get are:
• I would get a bigger TV.
• I would take a vacation.
• I would get new rims for my truck.
• I would get an iPad.
• I would get new carpet.
We don’t really know what greed is.
Nine out of ten times the answers revolve around what the person can buy for themselves. Part of what it means to love money is focusing on accumulating the stuff money allows you to gather.
This is where it gets interesting. When I ask people (and you can do the same) what would they do if I gave them a substantial amount of money, say $10 million or more? They say:
• I would quit working so hard (stop chasing money).
• I would get a private nurse for my aging parents.
• I would give to the children’s hospital.
• I would build a homeless shelter.
• I would send a million Bibles into Third World nations.
Well, this is indeed interesting. When most people think about getting a substantial amount of money— what most would consider “too much” or “greedy” for them to keep for themselves—they think of ways to act with it that are not greedy at all. But when they think about getting just a little bit more than what they have— an amount nobody would consider “greedy”—they actually become greedy and selfish, thinking of ways to spend it on themselves. If this is you, don’t feel too bad, you are in the same boat as most people around you. I used to be the same way. When you don’t have enough for you, you are what you tend to think about. When you no longer have to worry about you, you have the ability to expand your vision. It just goes to show, though, how much work we have cut out for us; we have been living the wrong way (but calling it right) for generations now.
This means the vast majority of people, those with a heart and soul, are and have been using the non-Biblical definition of “love of money,” which is really just the image of greed and/or accumulating wealth, as the common definition.
Yet, so wrong is the common definition that we don’t even recognize greed when we live it out. Here is an example:
Sally goes to church, reads the Scriptures, and has a job at Road Runner Logistics. She goes into work early, leaving family behind in order to make money. She stays late for the extra $2 per hour in overtime. When offered time at work this weekend, she accepts, sadly missing her daughter’s soccer game so she can make an extra 80 bucks after taxes. When a transfer opportunity is offered to her, one that would require her to move her family three hundred miles away, away from the kids’ school, away from her friends, away from her and her husband’s parents and siblings, she takes it because it pays more. How much does it pay? Five dollars more per hour. An extra $200 a week, or $800 a month, was all it took for her to leave the most important things in order to “advance my family’s financial situation.” Eight hundred bucks! And that’s before taxes.
Do not misunderstand me; I am all for doing whatever it takes to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. There are wonderful parents raising kids out of their cars as they work any job that will have them. Even though they may need to work long hours, they are doing what they can. I respect them for doing what they need to do, and it should be appreciated! A child raised in a tent city where his parents read the Scriptures to him and teach him the ways he should live has a much better life than a kid in an exclusive neighborhood with parents who ignore his upbringing.
My point is not that we should ignore our families’ needs—we shouldn’t—but that what we are doing many times is not the right thing, for us or our families, and in many cases it is actually the greedy thing to do because it only focuses on our needs and not the greater needs we, as believers, should be focusing on.
I remember once, after I gave a presentation, someone came up to me and said, “Josh, I don’t need millions of dollars, I can get by very nicely on forty thousand a year.” To which my response was, “That is great and I’m glad you have your needs met. There is a children’s hospital in town, and that hospital needs more money to help more kids. There are unsaved people around the world who need to have a missionary share with them the Gospel, but the missionary needs money in order to go. If you care about God and others, life is not about what is enough for you, it is about living out God’s purpose for your life, and a billion dollars, at that point, would not be ‘enough’
