Ep. 094 - Does Your Heart Have a Money Problem? Let’s Talk About the Biblical Cure

Episode Transcript

Spencer
Money, promises security, comfort and even identity, but it often ends up controlling us. In a culture where materialism is the dominant story, we need a better one. The Bible tells us that giving is not just about meeting needs. It's about breaking the grip that money has on our hearts. Today we'll explore why generosity is a spiritual discipline that frees us to trust God and to live with joy.

Austin
Well Spencer, today we get to dive into we're going to take a shift from talking to you about our finish line to talking about giving. So we want to reframe this again. We're going back through that five uses of money. We can use it to live give, owe, and grow. So we're gonna spend the next couple episodes talking about giving and today we want to rewind just a little bit and ask the question from the beginning, why does money have such a grip on our hearts?
If at the end of the day, we are going to get to a place where we say giving breaks the power that money has, we have to first be aware that money has power over our lives. And I think that we need to look at when Jesus says, you cannot serve God and money and what he uses, the word that he uses for money, there is a word mammon, and it's actually a proper noun.
And this is where I think we need to remember that we actually live in a spiritually charged world, that there are demonic presences that want to captivate our minds and turn us away from the living God. And so Jesus in this, he's saying, you can either serve God or you can serve mammon. He's putting them essentially as two beings up against one another and saying, you will bow down at the throne of God, or you will bow down at the throne of mammon.
And I think the reality here is, as we start really wrestling with this, we have to start asking ourselves, are we going to submit to the throne of God and His kingdom purposes? Or are we going to submit to mammon and his empty promises of a life of materiality and comfort? And until we start really framing it and recognizing that the enemy of the Father the enemy of Christ, longs for us to reorient our lives away from serving the King to serving some other idol.
If we forget that, then we can forget that these decisions actually have power. Andy Crouch does a great job in a video that will link, that he does for faith driven investor on this topic of God and mammon. That if you're interested, we would suggest, hey, take some time and watch it. But the reality here is that is our worldview.
Mammon is the worldview. It's the dominant draw of our culture. Shopping. Spending money on yourself. If we look at everything of the 21st century, it is how can I create a world of luxury that allows you to spend everything on yourself, to get whatever you want, whenever you want?

Spencer
Well, and we love what Andy Crouch positions it as because it's what he says is fungible influence. Or you could say power that can be stored. So you look at any of the other things that we might possess, any of the, the ways that we might have influence, you know, even if I was president of the United States, I would only be president for a few years.
So it's not like I have that forever. Or if I am the chair of the board for a particular company, I have that as a period of time. Or I might even, you know, have some kind of influence where I have a piece of property or something like that. But money in particular, that is liquid, that is fungible.
That, that can we can use at a moment's notice to have more influence. We can, it is stored power in a sense that we can tap into at any point that is such a draw, because it's different than laying our lives down and saying, oh, the Lord is my, provider. Instead, we can look to that as our provider.
We can look to that as our security, as that which will protect us, that which will feed us, rather than the Lord. And so it's I think it's that reason. And again, we encourage you to look at Crouch's video because he does such a nice job of unpacking this in a way that, was new to us.

Austin
Absolutely. So we want to start and say we come back to something that Ron Blue says, that giving is the only way to break money's power over our lives. When we release control, when we open our hands and say, God, this is yours, I'm going to first give back to you and then everything else you have say over.
But first we we need to remember that we are stewards of these resources that God has placed in our hands. And we look at 1 Timothy 6:10, and it kind of just continues to remind us that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It's not the root of evil, it is the root of all kinds of evil.
It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains. We recognize again, this is scriptural, like it is the reality that money is a chief competitor for our hearts. And so if we open ourselves up and say, okay, God, I'm a steward, I know that my craving for more is going to lead me away from the faith.
A desire for more money, a desire for whatever that is, is going to, and it has for the course of history led our believers, our brothers and sisters, away from the faith caused many pains. Okay, what do I need to do? I need to again lay myself before the Lord and say, okay, God, am I willing to actually bow down before your throne and say I am a steward and not an owner and begin by first saying, okay, let me lay these resources at your feet.
Let me lay them at your hands. And I think we do this because Christ first was abundantly generous to us. God breathed life into us. He continues to uphold us by the word of his power. We look to Ephesians 2:4-7 and this is God's lavish grace. And it says, But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him, and seated at him, with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages you might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Again, it's this lavish nature that God has so abundantly given us life that I think we often look at giving as a chore and not in a joyful response to the God of the universe who has given us everything.
And I think we first need to work on our hearts. Like if our hearts are cold towards the Lord and we say giving is a chore, I don't want to tithe because that's legalistic. I don't want to give money to the church because the church has done X, Y, or Z, or this missions organization isn't 100% perfect. So I'm not going to give them this because their health insurance premiums or the whatever how the health insurance plan that they offer is terrible.
You know, if we can always create some laundry list of issues of why we shouldn't give, but I think that illuminates our hearts are not postured in a place of reception to the grace of God, and we respond out of joy and obedience. But if my heart is cold to the Lord towards the Lord, I'm always going to find a reason not to give.

Spencer
Well, we have that, and then we really have the other side too, which is if we are fearful of things that take us away from the love of God. If money is that chief thing, even if we come to a point where we say, I don't know that that charity is doing a great job with the funds or my my church might not be the best place they could misuse some of this or even, you know, if I pass this on to this friend or this heir, you know, early, I'm not sure that they'll do great things with it.
Well, in some ways, selfishly, we should try to pass those on because they're no longer in our hands. The the steward recognizes. Okay, I do want to make a good stewardship decision. I can never be perfect in that decision. I cannot control once those resources leave my hand. So we need to have a level of due diligence there.
But from a protection of our own hearts standpoint, if the money is away from us and we cannot pull it back, it is so much more protective. Even if you take the $50,000 and I'm not telling you to do this, but even if you took those resources and you put them on fire. We have seen so many different people, just the amount of resources draw them steadily away from the Lord.
Now we're going to always advocate, give to good charities, pass resources on to the people that you love, do so in redemptive ways. But when we're really appropriately fearful, of money in ways that it can take us from the love of God. I mean, you know, Jesus talks about sin and he talks about really being serious about sin, that we pluck out an eye or we cut off a hand if, that entices us.
And money is one of those ways, it really is. So that that's going to probably sound abrasive coming from a financial advisor that, you know, the, the M.O. of, financial advisors and planners and, you know, American capitalism is just you can never quite have enough 15% more is what you need. You know, that'll get you always, you know, happy, it really coming back to if we give it away, even if it has no impact, it can protect our souls and really important ways.
I think that's where we can kind of release ourselves from trying to get it perfect in the gift. And saying this is it is about the recipient. It is about being a steward, but it's also about being protective of my own heart and saying it needs to leave my hands.

Austin
Right. Well, and I think to, if we come back to that passage in Matthew 6 where Jesus is saying, don't lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust don't destroy, and thieves cannot break in and steal.
For where your treasure is, there your heart is also. If I am holding these treasures, if I'm holding money in my possession because I think I'm a better steward than the charity, or because I think man and if I get a 10% rate of return, then I can give 10% more. It's really looking at myself and saying, well, I must know better than x, Y or Z.
I must know better than the Lord who says, maybe I should be giving it away, right? That's not that's a really dangerous place to be. And I think to you, this, this picture that Jesus gives us of lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. Randy Alcorn talks about sending it on ahead, laying in those building blocks and foundations of what is going to come to us when we reach eternity with the Lord.
And I love 2 Corinthians 9 here. The point is this whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. This may not be an earthly, Bountiful reward. It may be a Bountiful reward. When we reach the kingdom and are fully alive in Christ, we want to send those treasures on ahead because they're already the Lord's.
If I'm white knuckling them, trying to hold them in my possession because I need control, I'm fearful that things are not going to go my way, or fearful that I can always do better. And so I have to hold them myself. It's time to it's time to release. It's time to release and respond to God who has been abundantly gracious towards us.
So, Spencer, in our next episode, we're going to talk a lot more in depth about how much Christians should actually get. And we realize that's a charged conversation, but we want to start thinking again. Like Randy Alcorn says, you can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. So as we think about sending it on ahead, as we think about laying up our treasures in heaven, what are maybe
just some starting frameworks where we start to think about how much should we actually give as followers of Christ?

Spencer
Well, before we even think about how much should we give or what should be our framework there, I think what we want to move towards is this idea that giving will actually bring joy, and it will give us a tie to that which we support. So rather than maybe investing in a publicly traded stock, you know, if I, we've talked about this before, but if I invest $50,000 in Apple stock, I will be very interested in Apple's earnings reports and their next iPhone and etc., etc., etc. because I want to see that investment grow and flourish.
If instead I give $50,000 to a charitable cause, let's say I give it to Hope International and they take that $50,000 and they use it to make, you know, a 100 loans of $1,000 apiece to entrepreneurs around the world. I'm going to be very interested in what's happening with those loans, the impact that those loans are making all around the world, what the Hope board of directors, decides to do in different countries and where they might enter or what their approach might be, because $50,000 to me is a lot of money.
So I want to be tracking that. So, you know, I look at that and when we have released those funds, when we make that investment, it should bring us a great deal of joy. And so if we have that as our framework, what we would like to do if we start at 10% and we feel that joy, then maybe the next year it's 11%, and the next year it's 15%, whatever it might be.
But hopefully we're always being drawn to a higher level of giving because we see what's going on in our hearts, which is, oh, I release this. So I didn't have maybe the same level of spiritual attack that I might have had otherwise. But I'm also being drawn over here on this side of things, seeing new things about what God is up to in our day, the body of Christ, how it's beautiful and growing and emerging.
Not just maybe in our local community, which is important to give to you, which we'll talk about next time. But also internationally. You know what the Lord might be up to and how, you know, believers in Iran or in Afghanistan or in South America might be influencing us in some really important ways, because maybe we haven't, properly understood key portions of the gospel, and they're helping to point those out to us.
So I think all of those things, you know, if we if we can look at this and we can approach it from a standpoint of, and I really want to have more joy, you know, here. And if I release more, let me, let me release it, Lord, to causes to people to those places, again, that will allow me to partner to walk alongside them and to have just a glimpse of joy and what they're up to.

Austin
Absolutely. Yeah. And I think if we frame it again, I want an abundance of joy. I want more of Jesus. I want more of his grace, of his love. And I get to say, I'm going to laugh in the face of mammon, who says you need to spend this on yourself to to have that joy and say, no, I'm actually going to give to the Father.
And that's what produces lasting joy. Mammon produces maybe a happiness in the moment that's fleeting. The King of Kings produces eternal, steadfast joy. And so the greatest way that you can laugh in the face of the enemy is to say, no, I'm actually not going to give you what you think is best for me, but I'm going to lay these treasures back at the feet of Jesus, and I get to see what Jesus does in the world, and I get to see my friends share stories of people coming to faith in the Lord.
And I get to hear of loans to men and women that are so small, in my estimation, but loans that absolutely transform their world. These stories compel us to joy. As I think about, you know, my kids last year, we started with helping them and saying, hey, we're going to give you a little bit of money during Christmas.
All you have to do is just tell us where you want it. Given my son came up to me this Christmas and said, hey dad, I know what I want to give to before we even prompted him to say, hey, you've got money this year. He just anticipated it, which is great. But he was like, I want to give to Samaritan's Purse.
He saw what they were doing and Operation Christmas Child. He was like, I want to give to them. And so it's it's ways that we can we're sending it on ahead for ourselves. And I think just like if we pass wealth on to our kids, the damage that it can do if we join with them and partner with them in sending it on ahead of the kingdom, then they can follow in that joy of saying man, God,
you were doing abundantly good work in the world, and I want to give to break the power of money, to see the abundant joy of the King of Kings. And so clients, if you have questions about how to really wrestle with giving, how to wrestle with, how do we actually break this power that mammon often has over our lives?
We would love to have that conversation with you. As always, feel free to leave questions down in the comments below and we'll see you again next time. Take care! If you found this episode valuable, share it with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss the next episode.

Disclaimer
This content was provided by Second Half Stewardship. We are in Knoxville, Tennessee and you can visit our website at www.secondhalfstewardship.com. The information in this recording is intended for general, educational and informational purposes only, and should not be construed as investment advisory, financial planning, legal, tax, or other professional advice based on your specific situation. Please consult your professional advisor before taking any action based on its contents.