How much money would it take before you thought of yourself as wealthy? Ask around and you will get very different answers, because our idea of wealth is relative and it keeps moving. Maybe the better question is the one Paul puts to us: how much would it take to be content? Contentment turns out to be far more about attitude and perspective than about any number in an account.
Sunday’s lesson, the next in our Seeking First series, walked through two passages that reshape what we treasure: Jesus in Matthew 6 and Paul in 1 Timothy 6.
Where your treasure is
Jesus said, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth… but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (). Then he adds a line about the eye being the lamp of the body. His point is about the way we see. Giving, prayer, and fasting are good, but what matters is the heart behind them. If our eye is set on what we can gain here, our whole life fills with that darkness. If it is set on God, it fills with light. That is why he concludes, “No one can serve two masters… You cannot serve God and money.”
Godliness with contentment is great gain
Paul warns Timothy about people who imagine “that godliness is a means of gain,” then turns the idea around: “godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (). He is blunt about the danger: “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,” and chasing it has pierced many people “with many pains.”
Notice what he does not say. He does not say money is evil or that having it makes you wrong. Money is a tool. It is the love of it, the trusting in it, the hoarding of it, that does the damage. The trouble starts when the uncertain thing becomes the thing we build our lives on.
What actually counts as wealth
Most of us know, if we stop and think, that the richest parts of life are not the house or the car or the retirement account. They are our friendships, our families, and our brothers and sisters in Christ. A shared meal with people you love fills you up in a way a direct deposit never will. Those are the things we treasure and remember. Money is simply one of the tools God gives us to live, not something to worship.
So Paul tells “the rich in this present age” not to set their hope “on the uncertainty of riches, but on God,” and to “be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life” (). You can hear Matthew 6 echoing through it. True wealth is being rich in good works. The generous person, not the hoarding one, is the one storing up what lasts.
Seeking first the kingdom changes what we see as valuable and where we put our trust. If you reach the end of life with an empty account but a room full of people who love you and a God who provides, you were truly rich all along. That is the good life, the one Jesus and Paul keep pointing us toward: “that which is truly life.”
If you have been chasing the wrong things and want to start storing up what really lasts, it begins with giving yourself to Jesus Christ. You are always welcome to worship and study with us at Decker Prairie, and anyone here would be glad to talk and pray with you.
