We’re looking at how following Jesus impacts our view of money. I sat in Chapters a couple weeks ago, next to some guys talking about motorcycles. They all rode one kind of bike or another, and were talking about insurance, alarms and more.
One man was about to sell his house, and wanted to use the profit, all of it, to buy his dream bike. His friend got upset, and said, this is because you’re single. I could never spend like that with a wife and kids, I have too many responsibilities.
The motorcycle buyer said, “I Know, there are a lot of better ways I could spend the money, too, but this is my dream bike, I just have to have it”.
These guys had significantly different values about money. Partly this is because of their different experiences – the guy with a family had to change his spending habits to support something more important than his dream bike.
I do have to wonder, though, if this will remain his buddy’s dream bike, or if there’ll be a new dream in five, then, twenty years while this one sits in the garage. Or what happens when he can’t ride anymore, and has to sell a depreciated bike. Will this still be his dream, or is the dream always changing?
In yesterday’s passage of scripture, Paul uses the same language Jesus is known for using – he refers to storing up treasure in heaven, instead of on earth.
In other words, we need to dream bigger dreams than motorcycles and vacations. They’re not bad in and of themselves, but when they become our dream, prioritized over all else, we’ve made them into our ultimate good, and that’s very bad for us. A few weeks ago, I defined sin in this way, as when we take something good, make it our ultimate good, and that is ultimately bad for us.
We free ourselves from slavery to false, empty and fluctuating dreams by gaining and saving in order to give generously. In our series on Becoming Like Family, we talking about three ways to give: to Christian ministries like Redeem the Commute, to other work consistent with God’s kingdom values, and to save in order to directly help friends and family in need.
Challenge: Write, sketch, or imagine God’s dream for you in his kingdom. What lasting impact has he positioned you to make on the world? What financial changes would you have to make to do it?
Read the Bible in Sync Today
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We are a few weeks into a new series on “Becoming Like Family”. This is important as members of our online community begin to share the daily challenges with friends, and we begin to gather our larger community together as one church community. We won’t be bound together by a building, or institution, but rather by five commitments. We’ve talked about commitment to common learning goals, connectedness as a community of small and large groups, connectedness to God in worship, and now this week, we come to grace in lifestyle.
Those who’ve decided to follow Jesus, and walk in his path, are going to have to choose this over other paths. These choices impact many areas of life. That should be no surprise, but sometimes it’s hard to swallow. We can recoil from rules, or worry about restricted freedom.
We’ll explore that this week, but it starts with understanding why we are asked to live by, and with, grace.
But what does grace mean?
There is a classic Seinfeld episode where Elaine is in a job interview, and the interviewer shares her admiration of Jackie O, who had “grace”. Elaine tries to say, “I think I have a little grace” but the interviewer snaps back, “You can’t have a little grace, you either have it or you don’t.” Elaine backpendals, “Alright, I have no grace. I don’t have grace, I don’t want grace. Hey, I don’t even say grace.”
You can see the confusion here – what does grace even mean? Is it poise and kindness? Is it a lovely name for an old lady that is finally making a comeback? Is it a prayer before a meal?
Question: What do you think of when you hear the word grace? What does it mean?
Reminder: Last week we talked about worship, and asked you to complete our online survey about worship here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/8TS7K93
Reminder: Earlier in this series, we saw the importance of reading the Bible together in sync, so our new daily bible readings start today in our mobile app and web site.
