Do you remember when you were a kid and $1 felt like a ton of money? When you we’re little $1 might as well have been a $1,000,000. It meant that you had freedom to buy something and enjoy it. As you got older $1 wasn’t going to cut it anymore and $20 became a lot of money, and then $100, and so on. Seemingly, as we grew, our desire for money grew exponentially.
I remember hearing someone use the phrase, “I got addicted to a paycheck” and he explained that as meaning he got addicted to getting that money every two weeks and seeing that number go up year over year. Then one day he looked around at his whole life and realized how wildly unhappy he was. See, it wasn’t that he was doing anything wrong to make money or had been unethical in his pursuits. He just realized that on some level he was so focused on increasing the number on his paycheck that he neglected the more important areas of his life.
Money isn’t a bad thing, like most things, it’s a good thing when it holds the proper place in our life. However, when money is where we find our happiness and security then it becomes a false god in our lives. When we put our trust, hope, and future in money we will always be left with a longing for something more.
So, as you read the story of the widow’s offering, I invite you to pray about how you can live and give like she did. She was on her last few pennies and still gave them away because she understood that God was going to take care of her. So, the question is, how can we, with much more money than the widow had, still give in a way where we trust God with our future.
Luke 21:1-4
As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. 2 He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. 3 “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4 All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
How can you cultivate a spirit of trust that God is in control of your future?
How can you be like the widow in terms of your attitude toward giving and your trust in God?
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