Do I Pray About the Money I Spend?

Read Luke 12:13-21.

On my keychain is a prayer, a small card we handed out some years ago in conjunction with our stewardship sermon series. The prayer is from "Enough" by Adam Hamilton and reads like this: "Lord, help me to be grateful for what I have, to remember that I don't need most of what I want, and that joy is found in simplicity and generosity." The prayer is rather worn from having been in my pocket so long, and when I first put that little tag on my keychain, I would pray that prayer a lot. Lately, though, I'd almost forgotten it was there.

Last night on Facebook, I came across a discussion about something a person who had purchased something that others found unacceptable. In typical Facebook fashion, people (hiding behind their keyboards) had decided it was okay to attack this brother in Christ verbally and try to shame him about his purchase. (It didn't work, as far as I could tell.) One person whom I know said something to the effect of, "If you didn't spend your money on that, you'd have more for God's kingdom work." Only this person said it more rudely.

How do we decide what to spend our money on? I tithe, and we give beyond that to support missionaries. Shouldn't I get to spend the rest of "my" money on whatever I want? Here's the problem with that thinking, at least to my mind: it's not really mine. It's all God's. He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the psalmist poetically says (Psalm 50:10). God made it all; it's all his. What I think is mine is actually his, and he can do so much more with what I have than I can.

Do I pray about the money I spend? Sometimes. I need to do so more often. It's far too easy in our consumer culture to get wrapped up in buy, buy, buy—because that's what the world says we need to do to help our economy. (Listen to all the news stories around the Christmas holiday that tell us we need to spend to help out the retailers.) And that's not to say we can't buy things that we enjoy. That's not to say the brother on Facebook was wrong or right. I don't know. What I do know is that the Bible says if we ask for wisdom it will be given to us (James 1:5). If we ask for wisdom when it comes to our money, God will give it to us. So I need to pray more. I need to use the doors to Walmart as an altar.


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