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For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:19-21 (NIV)
If you are blessed with a gift of singing, the chances are that you will enjoy using your vocal chords to bless others. Likewise, if your gift is in encouraging people, you will naturally get a buzz from interacting with folk who need a ‘lift’. Although we still have to work hard and apply ourselves, we actually thrive when operating in our gifts and enter into our God-given flow.
But there is a potential danger to look out for. It comes when we look to the gift and not the Giver, when we focus on the call whilst neglecting the Caller.
Is your treasure the wealth that you have, or maybe the potential wealth you can make? Or is your treasure Jesus? Deuteronomy 8:18 tells us that it is God who gives us the ability to create wealth. For those of you with an entrepreneurial gift you must continually remember that this is a gift from God. Therefore we should look upon the result of that gift (wealth) with a heavenly perspective.
If you think that just possibly your treasure may be in more of an earthly realm than a heavenly one, take a look at this ‘entrepreneurial gift’ checklist:
- Does your wealth creation gift have a detrimental effect on your relationship with God?
- Does your wealth creation gift lessen the time you should spend with your spouse and family?
- Does your wealth creation gift disconnect you from your local church and your service there?
- Do you read the pages of the business news more than the pages of your Bible?
- Do you think more about ‘great profits’ than the ‘greatest Prophet’?
- Are you consumed more by the thoughts of what you can get with your money (i.e. vacations, new car, bigger house) than by what good you can do with it (i.e. feed the poor, give to the needy, make a sacrificial offering)?
If you can answer ‘yes’ to any of these questions then you need to stop immediately. Evaluate whether your focus is on the gift or the Giver. And most importantly, get help by talking these issues through with a trusted friend, accountability partner or Christian leader.
Don’t kid yourself by thinking you can serve Jesus separately from operating in the gifts and abilities that he has given you. Your work life and your 'spiritual' life are not separate areas - we are accountable to God for every area of our lives. And our so-called 'secular' work can just as much be service to God as full-time Christian ministry, if we offer our whole lives to him to use. The Bible tells us in Romans 11:29 that the gifts that God gives us are ours for keeps, and whether we use them or abuse them, he will never take them back. But you can’t automatically assume that just because you’re operating well in your gifting that God is pleased with you. You can achieve what looks like ‘great success’, but when your accomplishments are tested by fire that’s when their true value is seen.
SEEK THE SOURCE
But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your forefathers, as it is today.
Deuteronomy 8:18 (NIV)
Let’s remember it is God who has given many the ability to create wealth. Let’s be thankful to ‘Him’. Seek his face, not his hands. When we seek after God for who he is, instead of what he can give us, it is then that the Father’s natural reaction is to bestow blessings upon those he loves.
Have you got a calling to operate in the commercial world? Are you naturally able to make a quick buck? Do you have a gifting to create wealth? Has God led you to run a business?
If the answer is yes, then you particularly need to safeguard yourself by continually checking your motives, evaluating your heart and making sure that Jesus is still number one in your life - with nothing else coming close. You need to know for sure that if he called you to stop what you are doing, that you would unreservedly do just that. You would do that knowing that obedience to your heavenly Father is of paramount importance for the success of your life, not to mention for the way in which you will live out eternity.
Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment.
1 Timothy 6:17 (NLT)
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