Confronting Our Poverty of Mind
Mark 4: 3-8, 13-20
Brett Blair tells the story of the very first person to reach the status of billionaire. At the age of 23, he had become a millionaire, by the age of 50 a billionaire. Every decision, attitude, and relationship was tailored to create his personal power and wealth. But three years later at the age of 53 he became ill. His entire body became racked with pain and he lost all of his hair. In complete agony, the world’s only billionaire could buy anything he wanted, but he could only digest milk and crackers. An associate wrote, "He could not sleep, would not smile and nothing in life meant anything to him." His personal, highly skilled physicians predicted he would die within a year. That year passed agonizingly slow. As he approached death he awoke one morning with the vague remembrances of a dream about not being able to take any of his successes with him into the next world. The man who could control the business world suddenly realized he was not in control of his own life. He was left with a choice. He called his attorneys, accountants, and managers and announced that he wanted to channel his assets to hospitals, research, and mission work. On that day John D. Rockefeller established his foundation. This new direction eventually led to the discovery of penicillin, cures for malaria, tuberculosis and diphtheria. But perhaps the most amazing part of Rockefeller’s story is that the moment he began to give back a portion of all that he had earned, his body’s chemistry was altered so significantly that he got better. It looked as if he would die at 53 but he lived to be 98. Rockefeller learned gratitude and gave back the vast majority of his wealth. Doing so made him whole. And then Brett Blair writes, “It is one thing to be healed. It is another to be made whole.”
Jesus Christ did not come to earth to heal you but to make you whole. The Greek word for save literally means wellness or wholeness. The purpose of God’s salvation is that you become whole in every area of your life. God wants you to thrive not just survive in life. God wants you to experience health and wealth in every area of your life, Because you cannot be fruitful without first being healthy. Wealth is also tied to your mind as well as your spirit. Last week we talked about the poverty of Spirit which is fed by the cancer of selfishness. Today we are going to talk about the mind and the obstacle to Biblical, financial health which is the poverty of the mind.
Wellness in any area of your life is tied to fruitfulness. We are created to bear fruit. If you don’t bear fruit then it is a sign that things are not well with you. Fruitfulness should be the purpose of life. In fact, throughout Jesus’ ministry, He constantly talked about how we should bear fruit. In John 15:16 He says, “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit— fruit that will last.” In Matthew 12:33 He says, "Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.” In fact, Jesus goes even further, declaring "I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. (John 15:1-2) What that tells us is: this bearing fruit is a serious thing with God! We are not only called but created to bear fruit.
Fruitfulness is dependent on many factors. The first is the seed itself. Max Lucado writes, What if I owned a greenhouse that had been given to me by my father? He used state of the art equipment to create the ideal structure for growth. The atmosphere is perfect. The lighting exact. The temperature is suited for flowers, fruit, or anything I want, and what I want is flowers and fruit. You then watch me walk into a field and strip seeds off of weeds. Crab grass seeds, dandelion seeds, grass burr seeds. I fill a bag with the seeds and return to the greenhouse. You can’t believe what you’ve just seen. "I thought you wanted a greenhouse full of flowers and fruit." "I do." Then don’t you think you ought to plant flower seeds and fruit seeds?" "Do you have any idea how much those seeds cost? Besides, you have to drive all the way to the garden center to get them. No thanks, I’m taking the cheap and easy route." And that’s the way it is, we often take the cheap and easy route in the planting seeds. We choose the seeds of the world instead of the seeds of kingdom You have to make sure you’re sowing the right seed. If you sow the seeds of weeds, you’re not going to harvest grain. That seed for us comes from God. John 15:4-5 says, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit…”
Second, it’s what you do with the seed. There’s a fable about a rich man who had kept all of his wealth to himself and lived the finest of lives with all the best of everything for him. Yet he was miserable. So he went to visit a rabbi to discover the secret of happiness. The rabbi took the rich man to a window. "Look out there," he said. The rich man looked into the street. "What do you see?" asked the rabbi. "I see men, women, and children," answered the rich man. Then the rabbi took him to a mirror. "Now what do you see?" "Now I see myself," the rich man replied. Then the rabbi said, "Behold, in the window there is glass, and in the mirror there is glass. But the glass of the mirror is covered with a little silver, that represents your wealth, and no sooner is the silver added than you cease to see others, but only yourself.” It’s what you do with the seed that’s makes all the difference in whether fruit is produced. When you focus on your own money and possessions, you focus on yourself. But when you focus on God’s will by responding to the call to be a good steward of the resources God gives to you, then you sow financial wealth from God’s perspective.
We learn several things about money in today’s Scriptures and one of those is that God gives you the ability to produce wealth. Did you know that? God gave you the ability, the opportunity and even the education to make money and to some even make wealth. But here’s the thing, money and wealth do not come from us, all wealth comes from God. That means I never have to cross the boundaries of integrity to pursue wealth because it doesn’t come from dishonesty. You remember the scandal with Martha Stewart. She forgot that all wealth comes from God and stepped across the line of integrity. Remember Ken Lay, CEO of Enron, a committed Christian and Chair of the Administrative Board of his UM church in Houston? He forgot that all wealth comes from God and stepped across the line of integrity.
It also means I don’t have to hoard money because of greed for God gives us the ability to make money regardless of the economic conditions. Now hoarding is the challenge facing us today as the markets are falling and the economy is shrinking. The natural tendency in uncertain times is to hold onto what we have. So we are faced with the decision of whether to hoard or to trust God and His Word that he will provide for all of our needs.
With the ability to make money and the receipt of money comes a sacred trust. And whether you have little or much right now, whether your wealth is increasing or decreasing, we are called to be faithful. We are accountable to God for what we do with what we have, whether we have little or much in our hand. The value of Biblical wealth is generosity. As followers of Jesus, we’re building our financial wealth on the Word and God’s promises contained in it. Proverbs 11:25 says “a generous person prospers; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.” Life is not about how you can be blessed in this life but rather how you can be a blessing to others. For this life is about fruitfulness. The priority of wealth in the Scriptures is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, with all your life energy pursue God’s purpose and everything will be given unto you. So fruitfulness begins with the seed you are using so it becomes absolutely critical to be sowing our seeds in the Word and will of God and that means building our faith portfolio.
Third, fruitfulness depends on dealing with the weeds. “Still others are like seeds sown amidst thorns.” What are the weeds in your life? In our lesson today, three are mentioned: The worries of this life (fear), the deceitfulness of wealth (materialism) and the desires for other things (greed). Which of these is your weed? In any landscaping or garden, if you don’t pull the weeds then you’re not going to be very fruitful. Now here’s I’ve have learned: the weeding process is constant because whether its worries of this life, or the pursuit of more things for happiness, these things are constantly creeping into your life to attach themselves to the health that is growing in your life.
The Dayton Daily News asked their readers this question: Do you contribute to any kind of charity? Now I would think that most people contribute to a charity but two of the four people printed in the paper didn’t. One young man said, “I’m trying to put myself in a position to obtain a comfortable lifestyle (by the way, this life is not about comfort). This has to happen before I can ever think about donating.” He really said where most people are, even those in the church. Most people in the church believe in God and even Jesus Christ but they trust the values of materialism by getting their security and happiness from their possessions, rather than from living out God’s will for our lives. They place more value in their ability to accumulate wealth than the promises and purposes of the kingdom. And so they give to sustain their lifestyle before they give back to God, especially when times get difficult. 1Tim 6:17
The mortgage lending scandal with sub-prime mortgages has not only pulled down the housing market but has also hurt the stock market here and abroad. How many of you have investments in the stock market whether it be stock or your 401k? How many of you have been impacted by that? That’s an investment in the future rather than most who were living off debt in the present. And yet that investment seems to be slipping away. Here’s the challenge of faith through all of this: as volatile as the stock market has been the last few months, put your trust in the kingdom of God and his righteousness rather than the Dow Jones. Because now I don’t have anything to worry about, no matter what happens in the stock market. Servant wealth, that is using your resources sacrificially to be a blessing to others, is a promise of God. But to give sacrificially, we are to have total trust in following Jesus.
When we try to do finances outside the word and will of God, it’s limiting and in the natural. But when we trust Jesus, he puts the super in the natural. Do you remember what Jesus did with a boy’s meal of 5 loaves and 2 fish? The disciples are thinking in the natural realm and want to send the 5000 families to go into town to get their own food. But Jesus took the loaves and fish, gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. “And when he was done, there was an abundance left over.” When you trust Jesus, he puts the super in the natural in your life. You need to make sure that the right seeds are being planted into your life, the Word and will of God and that you’re basing your financial portfolio on the God’s Word
Fourth, you have to fertilize the root. How do you do that? By your behavior. Your behavior is what activates your faith, not your mental belief. What you’re doing with money says a whole lot about value. Values and ideals are different. Most people in church have ideals, those are the things you want. Values are what you do. Ideals are what you want or believe and values are what you do. So you fertilize the root by acting on the Word and God’s promises and by using His blessings and resources to bless others, thus turning ideals into values. There are several ways to do this. First, practice Biblical priorities. Start turning ideals that you have about Christianity into values by living them. The first thing is how you practice generosity, being rich towards God. Whatever age you are, the first 10% you get should go to God. Every one of us needs to critically look at what we are doing with our money. That’s means us individually and it means us as a church. We need to make sure we are spending more on the poor and those disconnected from God than we are on ourselves. We need to remember that the church is the only institution which was not created for its members. We are here for others and we need to hold each other accountable.
Second, we need to invest with a future focus. You’re going to reap tomorrow what you sow today. So if you are sowing procrastination, you will reap the fruit of procrastination tomorrow. Comedian George Burns says, “I look forward to the future because that’s where I’m going to spend the rest of my life.” If the future is where you are going to spend the rest of your life then that means you don’t want to spend the rest of your life paying for what you got yesterday. You want to be investing in tomorrow. Proverbs 6:6 says, “Look at the ant and consider its ways who stores up food for the winter.” Now why is an ant smarter than most Americans I know?
Have you heard of the 10-10-80 formula. If you’re in your 20’s, the first 10% should go to God. The next 10% should be invested in your future for retirement. That is untouchable money. And then you live off 80%. Now as you move into your 40’s those first two numbers need to change. The point is that as you increase your income, you don’t want to spend more of your income, you want to be more generous to God and increase your investments. If you are in your 20’s and take $80 a month which adds up to $1000 a year. If you invest that money over 40 years and average the 12% the stock market has averaged over its life, you’ll have $976,000 at the age of 62 and that’s not increasing your retirement savings. If you are in your 40’s and haven’t started, you need to save even more than 10%. Salvation is not just for heaven because God wants you to thrive every area of your life.
This week you should be receiving your commitment cards. And what we’re asking you to do is take some time to look over your money matters. Start with asking, Are you being generous toward God? Are you acting on the word? Does your spending reflect your ideals or your values? The second thing we want you to do is make an active attempt to get out of debt. For me, this means I’m trying to eliminate my mortgage. Giovanna and I have 3 years left on our mortgage. Now if you have credit card debt, you want to get rid of that first because of the outrageous interest you’re paying. If you are so overwhelmed, we classes which will help you learn how to do this. The last thing we want you to consider is what you are investing in the future. Jesus did not die just for your salvation. He died for you to have freedom in every area of your life.
