This year we began with the Series: Being A Blessing, and we have heard many great messages, exhorting us, entreating us, enlightening us to the reality that God has indeed called us, in fact - created us - to be bright, to be salty ... to be a blessing to those around us: saved, unsaved, found, lost, hurting, broken, and perfectly put together.
Trust is a big deal. It’s a subject that is talked about a lot between husbands & wives, friends, employees & employers; when election season rolls around the term ‘trust’ is bandied about like a tennis ball at Wimbledon.
So here we are, at the end of our 21 Day Financial Fast. It’s interesting because the way life works, we don’t usually have the luxury of seeing the end definitively or the beginning in any real discernible terms. It all runs together. As the saying goes: life happens.
Here we are, on the second-to-last day of the Financial Fast. As I reflect on all that I've learned, the thing I appreciate most about the Financial Fast is learning the difference between a want and a need. Even items that I "need" at the grocery store, I often could live without. This fast has opened my eyes to how much I really don't need some of the things that I think are so necessary.
Being “found faithful” as a steward is the God-part of this whole thing that is very documented in scripture. Not much room for interpretation when it comes to faithfulness with what we possess because the Bible is very clear on this. As a matter of fact, in Luke 16 in the opening of this chapter, “true riches” or spiritual things are held at arms length based on our trustworthiness in worldly wealth. Our desire is to “put our affections on things above” according to Colossians, but that means we have dealt with the worldly pull of material, natural things.
Fear doesn’t have to make sense to be effective. I can still remember lying in bed at night as a child and being gripped by a fear that the oscillating fan in my room might catch fire and burn our house down. Random? Yes. Rational? Not really. Powerfully effective? Definitely.
The pointed nature of these last few chapters is unavoidable. Our choices, our decisions, the actions we take are a direct result of our faith in God and how it is that we see Him interacting with both our daily and eternal destinies.
I can truly say that this is one topic I would have never guessed we would read about during this fast, one topic that we would not ponder on and now one topic I would not write about and publish a blog for. However, it fits! Michele is right on - 100%. The commingling of funds, financial entanglement or as Michele states financial fornication, is a clear danger zone.