The Blueprint - 3 - The Design For Our Money

Today is the third week in our “The Blueprint” series. So far we have looked at God’s design for our time and our talents, this week we will be looking at God’s design for our money. We will be looking at how we can us our money wisely.

We are going to start with a game to begin with. Imagine that you woke up one morning and then you walk downstairs and you find £5,000 sitting on the doormat with a simple note on it saying “it’s a gift… enjoy”.

In your groups you need to decide how you would spend your money. On your whiteboards write down how you would spend your windfall…

Now that you have come up with your shopping lists I need someone to be a willing volunteer.

In or society, it is common for us to think that by having lots of money, and possessions that it will make our lives easier, more enjoyable or better.

Sometimes we can think that simply having more is the answer. Whether that is having more money, more stuff, more holidays or more free time. However, this is rarely the case. Some of the richest people are also the unhappiest.

A number of lottery winners have said that winning vast sums of money has ruined their lives. There is even the case of one person who is attempting to sue the following a win for ruining her life. One recent EuroMillions winner has said “People look at me and think, ‘I wish I had her lifestyle, I wish I had her money’. But they don’t realise the extent of my stress. I have material things but apart from that my life is empty. What is my purpose in life?”

People do not find happiness and purpose in their lives though amassing money and possessions because this isn’t how God intended for them be used. We see Jesus talking about this in Luke 12 : 13 - 21.

Here we see Jesus responding to a person who had come to him and asked a question about inheritance. I would guess that the man was hoping that Jesus would go up to his brother, tell him off and say “share your inheritance with your brother”. So that he too could benefit from his father’s money.

However, the reply that Jesus gives is very different from this. Instead of telling off his brother for not sharing his wealth, and in doing so making this man richer. He instead challenges him about how his attitude to money, and how he uses his stuff. Jesus is questioning him on whether he is really making the best use of the money he has before chasing after more.

In the parable the man wanted to extend his barn so that he could store his bumper harvest and then live off this for several years, to live on ‘easy street’ for the next few years living off his wealth, and not needing to rely on God or anyone else for the years to come. This mindset is bad for us we can fool ourselves into thinking that we can survive on our own, when really we need to rely on God.

Today we don’t use barns to store our wealth but the idea remains the same. There are things in all of our lives that we chase after and want. Maybe the latest phone or games console. Maybe it is some of the things from the shopping list that you made earlier. What one thing is at the top of your list?

Wanting and owning these things isn’t a bad thing, God wants us to be happy and for us to thrive in life. In fact the very next passage Luke 12 : 22 - 34 tells us that we don’t need to worry about our day to day needs because he will provide for us.

The key thing is that we are using the gifts we have to enable us to be the people of God, trusting that God will provide for us what we need when we need it. Rather than allowing money to be become God of our lives, being the thing that we focus on and chase after.

Ultimately God’s plan for our money doesn’t stop at what we want and what makes us happy. It is far bigger than that, and involves our whole church community.

One way that we can show our trust and appreciation to God is though the money that we give to support the work of his church. We are not looking at this to try and guilt-trip you into giving but because God’s people giving their money to support their church is a Biblical principle that God’s people have followed since the very beginning.

Throughout the Bible we see God giving his people clear instruction that we should bring our wealth to him. Across the Old Testament there are several instructions on how we should bring our “first fruits” as an offering to God, such as Proverbs 3 : 9 - 10.

The idea of bringing the first fruits is a significant thing. Many of the people at this time would have been farmers, so they would have relied on the food they grew to keep them alive. So by the time the first harvest of the year came, the “first fruits” they would be running low on food.

So therefore, giving this away to God demonstrated how much they trusted him, essentially saying “here God, I am giving you my next meal… the cupboards are empty, I don’t know where my next meal will come from, but I trust that you will provide”.

This is a challenging idea, how far do you think you would go to show God that you trust him?

Today we can still continue to follow this idea of trusting God with our money. Many Christians do this by tithing. Tithing is to give 10% of your income to God to support his church. We see in the Old Testament many instructions given by God to his people to bring the first 10% of their wealth to him, and in Malachi 3 : 10 we see this being accompanied with a challenge saying “’Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.”.

Similarly in the New Testament we are encourage to not only give our money to God but to do so cheerfully, as we see in 2 Corinthians 10 : 6 - 12.

Here we see that like our time and talents we can give to God’s work, not because we have to. Not because it is the law and we will be punished if we don’t but because we acknowledge that God is good and generous and that we want to make it possible for more people to know him better.

For the last few minutes let’s think about how we can put this into practice. Have a think about how you spend the money we earn, however much or little this might be and how we spend it.