You may have played the Powerball Lottery. That’s like paying more taxes! One man declared, “I won $100 playing the lotter y!” How many hundreds were spent tr ying to win that $100?
What if you hit it big? Bills wouldn’t keep you awake at night if only the big bucks came your way! Who Wants to BeaMillionaire? Whatever the amount, most winners have spent it all in one year!
Your new dream home might burn down tomorrow. Maybe you could afford fancy new cars, but they might get wrecked, stolen, or rusted. You might sleep until noon since leaving your day job, but what’ll you do when the money’s all gone?
This is a good time to read King Solomon’s legacy. The book of Proverbs in the Bible is a wise place to begin. Solomon wrote it! He was called the wisest man who ever lived.
Jesus spoke this parable: “Be on your guard against e very form of greed; for not even when one is affluent does his life consist of his possessions… The land of a rich man was very productive…‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’…This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones,and I will store all my grain and my goods there. And I will say to myself, You have many goods stored up for many years to come; relax, eat, drink, and enjoy yourself !’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is demanded of you; and as for all that you have prepared, who will own it now?’ Such is the one who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich in relation to God” (Luke 12:14-21). Many of Jesus’parables relate to our money or possessions.
Hetty Green lived during the Gilded Age in the late 1800s. Shebasedherself-worthon her monetary gains rather than on people or God. Hetty once received a one-million-dollar inheritance. It wasn’t enough. She complained! Its actual value today would be thirty-six million dollars! She lived a miser’s life and alienated everyone. Most of her adult life, she lived like a pauper! Dying at 81, Hetty’s fortune was valued at five billion dollars!
Jesus said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6:1921).
“But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God”( John1:12). Receive Jesus and find real life in Him!