If God Owns It All, What Am I Doing With It? Series

Now what happens is this: When I truly begin to believe that God owns everything, when I lose possession just as when I gain possessions, I will keep a steady course. Here’s what happens. If I truly believe God owns everything and I have some financial setback s if I lose a job; if all of a sudden, I get into the valley of dark financial times e if I truly believe that God owns everything, my anxiety and my attitude towards what I have lost will be much different than if I thought I owned it. Are you with me? If I think I own everything and then I get more and God blesses and I make more money; all of a sudden, if I’m not careful, I believe I own everything and my attitude is pride and arrogance. All of a sudden, I begin to become greedy and graspy and I begin to hold on to all of those possessions because I don’t understand something. I still think that they are mine.

You see it’s only when we understand that God owns it that we can have the balance Y emotionally, psychologically to handle the blessings and the setbacks of materialism. And the day that we begin to understand this is the day that we go down a long road in our maturity. Not only in responding as a good steward, but in our maturity of understanding balance in the ups and downs, in the economic turns and twists of our own life. You see, as I look at this passage of Scripture, I see that all that I have God has given to me. I see that God gives different amounts to different people, whether it’s talents or whatever, and I see that God has a right to hold me accountable.

2. Every spending decision is a spiritual decision.

I believe that it’s not only what we give to the Lord, but what we do with the rest of our checkbook that again shows where our values are. Let me quote Ron Blue and I have it in your sermon section because I think it’s an outstanding paragraph. He says, “You can’t fake stewardship. Your checkbook reveals all that you really believe about stewardship. A life story could be written from a checkbook. It reflects your goals, priorities, convictions, relationships and even the use of your time. A person who has been a Christian even for a short while can fake prayer, Bible study, evangelism, and going to church and so on but he can’t fake what his checkbook reveals.” Maybe that’s why so many of us are so secretive about our personal finances. This is heavy stuff isn’t it?

When a business or government suspects fraud, you know what they do don’t you? They follow what they call the money trail. They begin to look at the money and what it’s been spent on, and they begin to follow the money trail, and the money trail leads them usually back to intent and motives and decisions, whether they were made right or wrong. They don’t follow the verbal trail. They don’t bring in the person, and the person says well I know I haven’t been doing anything wrong. They don’t follow the verbal trail; they follow the money trail. That is exactly what God is teaching us in this area of stewardship. God doesn’t follow — folks read my lips — God doesn’t follow the verbal trail.