At what point will you stop pursuing the riches of this earth? Will it be when you retire? Will it be when you breathe your last breath? Or will you be making financial decisions right to the end? When will you decide to make God your top priority? When will following him be first?
Let’s not kid ourselves. We all need to work and make money to provide for ourselves and our families. It is the world we live in. God knows that. Yet, it is not the working to provide for our families that is the problem. It is the pursuit of worldly wealth. That draws us away from God.
Let’s also not fool ourselves into thinking that just because we do not have millions of dollars that we aren’t like those who have it. We can allow ourselves to get caught up in the worship of money. It may be striving to put as much as we possibly can into a retirement fund. It may be investing in the stock market. It may be hording stuff. It may be being stingy about giving to others. There are numerous ways for us to worship money or possessions.
Jesus tells the parable about the rich man who had and abundant crop and his desire to store it all up so he could relax and live the good life without working. But this man had evidently did not have a good relationship with God nor was he attempting to follow God’s commands. In the parable, God tells the rich man he is a fool and that his life was expiring that night. The man was in deep trouble, even though he was rich, because he put his faith in the riches of this world.
We can be just like this rich fool. When we put money and possessions ahead of our relationship with God and our desire to follow him, we fall into the same trap. We may say none of us are guaranteed tomorrow, but we don’t live that way when comes to our relationship with God. If we did, we would make prayer a priority. We would make reading his Word a priority. We would seek to know him with our entire heart and mind. We would treat everyone as Jesus did.
I pray we all make God our top priority. I pray we make praying to him and reading his Word a priority. I pray each one of us will seek God with our entire heart and follow his guidance for our lives. Make God your top priority. Spend time praying. Spend time reading God’s Word. Seek God with your whole heart.
Luke 12:20-21 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”
Marty Pressey 