Generous Life Devotional - Jan. 13, 2014

Day 9 – Be content with God’s daily provision

Ecclesiastes: 5:10;

10 Whoever loves money never has money enough;

whoever  loves wealth  is never satisfied with

his income.

This too is meaningless.

Philippians 4:13

13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.

Money is an elusive thing. Do you remember as a young child “saving up” for something you really wanted? Maybe it was a comic book. Maybe it was a doll. With a goal in mind you did your chores and saved up for what felt like forever. Finally, you bought it and the joy lasted all of one week. And then, it was time to save up for the next big thing. As you grew older, maybe then you saved up for a bicycle. After that maybe it was a car. Later on it was a home. Then it was retirement. As we get older the price tags just get bigger and bigger, don’t they?

Now this isn’t a problem if you have kept money in a right place in your life. You work for a wage and you spend it to live your life, that’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with paying your bills. But, what if you’ve started to live and work just to make money? Ecclesiastes 5:10 teaches the danger of this is that if you’ve come to love money, you’re never going to have enough. You’ll never be satisfied, because money never can satisfy. Instead of truly living life, you will be living out a balance sheet. Everything has a dollar figure, but, nothing has value.

The Bible also teaches that the only path to contentment is the one that runs solely through Jesus Christ. Once we have found forgiveness and reconciliation in him, we find that we can be content in any circumstance, whether rich or poor. Furthermore, once we have learned to find our contentment in Christ alone, we find ourselves able to live generously in a way that we were never able to before. While money was our joy and treasure, we couldn’t bear to part with it. Once Christ became our treasure, we realized we were not only able, but, even desiring to be generous to the glory of the Lord. In fact, by giving up worldly treasure, we can come to gain heavenly treasure. In the matters of the soul and heart, more money is never the solution.

Today’s Generosity Challenge:

Today, I want you to be introspective. In a listening prayer, ask the Lord to reveal to you how to attribute the importance of things by a dollar figure. What circumstances challenge your contentment? Then write down what the Holy Spirit reveals to you here at http://GenerousLife.net/Day9.

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Christianity / Devotionals / Generous Life / Generous Life Devotional - Jan. 13, 2014