Six Traits You Want In Your Life - 5. Stewardship - Proverbs 3:9-10 - Quick Observations

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We are now in our online bible study of 2John. Could you benefit from being involved in a bible study? If so, please fill out your name and email address to the right and you will be placed in a waiting list. When the next online bible study opens up, that list will be one of the first to be notified. Now to today’s quick observation.

Money, money, money. Why does it always boil down to money? Have you ever thought that about some ministries? All they want is your money? Doesn’t God own everything anyways that He does not need my money?

Is this the correct perspective we are to have on money and God? Or does God have something to say about it? Let us look at our verses to find out.

Looking at verse 9 at face value it tells us that we are to honor God with our possessions and with the first and best of what we gain. God has entrusted with us the things we have. We should be using our stuff to make God known to those around us. Not only that but give back to God from what we get. When you look deeper at the words honor, substance, and increase from this verse, they have a financial slant to their meaning. Literally then we are to give to God out of what we have and give to God out of what we get.

Let me give you one practical example out of many of how to do this. The idea of firstfruits in the Old Testament is the best of the first you receive in your harvest and that was to br given to God. When you receive your paycheck, to you give to God a percentage of the gross amount or the net amount? If you take it off the net, aren’t you letting the government get before God is? If you take it off the gross, even though the government gets their cut before the money is in your hand, your perspective is that God gets His first. Why would you do this? Let us look at verse 10 to see what will happen.

It says in verse 10 that your barns will be filled with plenty and your wine presses will flow with lots of wine. Now are you out of luck if you do not have a wine press or a barn? Absolutely not. Remember back then, wealth was measured in livestock and how much you were able to harvest from the earth. So this verse is saying that you will have plenty of wealth if you put God first in your finances. Before you go any farther, I do not support a health and wealth gospel, where your spirituality is measured by how much you have and how well you are and that sickness and poverty are punishments from God for sin in your life. But at the same time, I cannot deny what the verse says here. You will have what you need if you put God first in your money.

I have heard preachers say in the pulpit that if you want to take the “spiritual temperature” of a child of God, you just have to look at his or her checkbook, because where they invest their money is what they say is important in his or her life. The proper perspective is not to think that God needs my money, but I need to give God my money. So be a good steward with your money and honor God with it.