Committing Your Finances Series

Hey, did you all get your SKITTLES? Don’t you just love candy? Where else can you go to church and get a free bag of candy Skittles? Not to mention all of the coffee and cookies you can eat…ha

We are in the middle of a three-week series titled, “Built to Last.” This is a three-week series to help us get our priorities straight. Its what really matters in our lives…last week we started off on Fathers Day talking about Committing to your Family and how they have to be our Priority for our time. This week we will be talking about committing to our Finances and next week will be about Compassion, Committing to Others.

- I am sure all of us as parents have had this happen to us at least one time with your children, or if you haven’t yet you probably will. I think I’ve gone through it with each of my kids.

You know the scenario. I take my kids to the Mariners game and my son says, dad can I buy something to eat. So I give him 5 bucks and he comes back with a bag of Skittles. So I say, hey, can I have some Skittles? And he gives me this funny face and says nah. So I’m like come on give a couple of Skittles and he’s like no these are mine go get your own Skittles.

By this time I’m like going crazy. There are some things he just doesn’t know or isn’t thinking about…

1. I bought those Skittles for him in the first place and technically, they’re still mine…

2. I am big enough and strong enough; I could take the whole bag of skittles from him if I wanted to…

3. If I wanted to, I could reign down more Skittles on him than he could ever handle or hope to have…

When our children act like this we have to realize they just don’t see the whole picture. So I am going to take today’s talk on committing your finances and relate it to how we would teach our children about Skittles. So each of you make the application as it fits in your life and with your finances. The 1st thing we need to realize

1. Realize all Skittles are the Lords.

Psalm 50:10 For all the animals of the forest are mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills.

That’s funny because not only does God own the cattle on 1000 hills; he owns the thousands of hills that the cattle are on.

Psalms 24:1 The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him

There is not anything that was made or that exist that God does not own.

Leviticus 25:23 — “The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.”

Haggai 2:8 — “ ‘The silver is mine and the gold is mine,’ declares the Lord Almighty.”

Even we are Gods possessions…

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 — “You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”

And not only does He own us and our possessions, God is the one that gives us the wisdom and ability to earn every penny or every dollar that we earn.

Deut 8:18 — “Remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth.”

We really need to realize that all that we have and all that we will ever have is because God either gives it to us, or God allows us to have it. There is nothing we can do or own without God. We also need to realize…

2. Your Skittles are the key to your heart.

There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus Christ was the greatest teacher that ever lived. More books have been written about him and about his teaching and the short time that he lived on this earth than any other person who has ever lived.

And if you study the various topics that Jesus talked about…Jesus Christ the greatest teacher ever, devoted more of his teaching on finances than on any other subject with the exception of the kingdom of God.

And if you think about it, why would Jesus Christ, the greatest teacher ever, spend so much time talking about Skittles…?

Was it because He needed so much finances? Hardly, for all intensive purposes Jesus was homeless as He traveled from town to town, teaching people the good news.

Was it because He had a huge ministry to support? I would think not, as He had 12 disciples who lived the same as he did with nothing but the shirts on their back going from town to town introducing Jesus Christ.

Was it because he was speaking to such RICH people that had so much that they had a problem with materialism? If you read the New Testament you will find with just a few exceptions most of the people Jesus spoke to were peasants living closer to poverty than riches by far.