It's A Trap!

The average American is trapped. In fact, the average Christ follower in America is trapped. It's an epidemic. It touches just about every family. It's an obstacle that every church has to deal with. Most everyone you will meet today is caught in this trap. What trap has sprung on us & has so many of us caught in its snare? 

Check your pocket or purse. That's probably where you keep your own personal trap. Look out in your garage, pull out your phone, take a quick look at your closet because you may have some more traps in there too. The trap that so many of us are caught in is the trap of serving our money & our stuff. The average American is carrying a debt of $15,000 just on their credit cards. And when you look at the total consumer debt in America & spread it out over our entire population, we all owe close to $37,000, even our children! Obviously we have a problem. We're caught. We're caught in the trap of chasing after & serving our money, our things, our toys, & it's not just messing up our national economy; it's destroying families.

So what do we do about it? How can we escape the trap or avoid it altogether? After all, our economy is designed to trap us. Businesses produce products that we didn't know we needed until we saw it. Then we can't imagine how we survived one day without that product. We'll take a perfectly good product we've had less than a year so that we can "upgrade" to the newer model. The system seems to be working against us. So what do we do?

Jesus has a lot to say about all sorts of areas of life, but especially money. If He wasn't teaching specifically about it, He was using it as a vehicle to teach a bigger truth. Jesus knew something. He knew that money gets our attention, & anything that gets our attention can get our hearts. So He didn't shy away from the topic. Instead, some of His most important teaching centered on money. In Matthew 6 Jesus warns us about which riches we're storing up, which kingdom we're building. We can invest in & build God's Kingdom, or we can invest in & build our own. Jesus warns us because when we build our kingdom, it's temporary. Someone can take it away, we can lose it, but when we invest in God's Kingdom, it's eternal & secure. Jesus goes on to point out that when you serve your stuff, worry is the automatic by-product. His whole warning is summed up when He says, "You cannot serve God & money."

Our money, our stuff is God's chief rival for our hearts & our devotion. When we serve our stuff, we find worry, tension, & an endless list of "What Ifs" that keep us chasing that next dollar or that next toy. When we serve our Savior, we find peace, joy, & contentment that is bigger than our circumstances. Jesus says, "Seek first God's Kingdom..."

"We Set Our Hearts Free From The Trap Of Serving Riches 

By Serving The One Who Richly Provides."

So what's that look like in real life? Here's a simple way to trust God over your stuff: start giving away some of your stuff. When we hoard or consume everything that we have, we're exposing the greed in our hearts, & we're steadily walking down the path toward trusting in & serving our riches. And by the way, this is true no matter your income or tax bracket. However, when we give, especially when we invest in God's Kingdom, we're putting something else at the top of our list. We're placing ourselves underneath something else. We're also moving toward a greater sense of dependence on our Father who provides for us, & in the process we discover ever greater depths of His faithfulness to us.

So how can you begin to invest in & build God's Kingdom rather than your own? How can you reprioritize your financial decisions to reflect trust in & service to your Heavenly Father & Your Savior?