Investing For Peace

“Financing for Peace” (Kingdom Cash VS the US Dollar)

(Let me start by saying that you do not buy your way into Heaven. But what you spend your money and your resources on certainly indicates where your heart is: in the world, or with God in Heaven.)

How many here obey God’s command to observe the Sabbath and take one day off every week?

What’s your favorite way to relax on that day off? I know Ric likes to go fishing. Alma, she likes to go to Costco on her days off… Keith, he enjoys golfing every now and then…

But how many of you, on your day of rest and relaxation love to get out all the paperwork and do your bills? Don’t you find it refreshing to pull out the credit card bills and the bank statements, and balance that checkbook on your day off? Of course not!

Money: finances are not typically a source of peace or relaxation for us, are they? They may be the means to an end of relaxation, but money itself, and the managing of our money does not bring us peace.

Earlier on in life, most of us assume the more money we have, the more peaceful our lives will be, but when we wise up, we begin to realize that money is not a source of peace. The more you have, the more you tend to worry.

I used to live part of my life day-trading stocks on the Internet… I would get up at 6:30 every morning, fire up the computer and the television, flip the channel to CNBC and stare at the ticker on my particular stocks… Every few seconds that ticker would go up or down, one or two pennies at a time and every penny was a $20 bill on a small 2,000 share trade. 7 cents was my target profit. Just 7 cents of profit was $140 a day. You can make a living on that. There were a few days when I made three or four thousands dollars. Sometimes I lost that much in one day. But no matter how well I did, I was always up the next morning, staring at the ticker and worrying about my money again.

Even in the evenings when the stock market closed, I was still worried about how the market would open the next day: higher or lower. I’d be up till 1:30 in the morning, watching the futures to see what the market conditions might be like in the morning. Now, I made money, but I have to admit that it was a particularly stressful time in my life.

No matter how well I did, the money I gained from trading stocks was never a source of peace for me.

Wealth does not bring people peace, as we think it will, even when it multiplies rapidly…

It only brings more stress.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a sure thing deal: a perfect investment with no downside: a perfectly safe place to invest, where no one ever lost a penny?

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could invest our money with total peace of mind?

In the Bible, God gives us a way to do that: a way to invest with total peace… And it starts with Him. It begins with a whole new way of thinking: a new way of how we see our money: God’s way.

In the Bible, God tells us, “You cannot serve both God and money.” It’s either one or the other.

"No servant can serve two masters. [Go try and work for Coca-Cola and Pepsi at the same time and see it they let you…] Either he will hate the one [Coke] and love the other [Pepsi], or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." Luke 16:13

You can’t serve both God and money, but you can serve God with your money.

That’s the whole purpose of the riches and the wealth God gives us: that we might serve Him…

? How do we invest and manage our finances in peace? By serving God with our resources.

I: Start seeing money as God does: as an investment tool for Him, not just you.

He doesn’t want us ashamed of the fact that we’re blessed, or that we have money. Nowhere in the Bible are Christians called to live in poverty… But He does want us to realize the purpose and the reason why we are blessed. We’re blessed because we are God’s children… But the purpose for the blessings is that we might earn a return on our investments (God is a businessman too): not the simple multiplication and reproduction of a dollar bill, but of something far more valuable: something, which outweighs and outlasts the dollar with eternal proportions. I’m talking about Kingdom Cash: the treasures we store up in Heaven by the things we do while we’re here on earth.