Keep your lives free from the love of money. And be satisfied with what you have. God has said, “I will never leave you; I will never run away from you.”

There is nothing wrong with money per se. We need it for daily life. It’s a useful tool with which to conduct commercial and financial transactions. Without money, we would have to go back to the days of bartering. We would have to lug our possessions around every time we wanted to improve ourselves financially. Money is one of the best inventions of humankind.

The problem is not money itself, but our feelings about money. The Apostle Paul said, “The love of money causes all kinds of evil,” (1 Timothy 6:10). The problems begin when people live to make and receive money. Instead of living to serve and love God, they live to acquire as much money as they can. That’s why Paul went on to say in 1 Timothy that some people have even “turned away from what we believe because they want to get more and more money.” Instead of living meaningful lives in obedience to God, they squandered their lives “trying to catch the wind,” (Ecclesiastes 1:14).

Money is like the wind. It’s difficult to hold on to. You never really catch as much as you want. It has a way of eluding your grasp and slipping through your fingers. The minute you think you have enough of it, the stock market dips, or the banks fail, or thieves steal some of it, or inflation reduces its value. Chasing after money is like trying to catch the wind because, like everything else in creation, it is here today and gone tomorrow. It is foolish to build your life around its acquisition.

It’s much better to serve and love God because He will always be there for you. When we place God first in our lives, everything else falls into place, subordinate to Him. When we place God first, we still make and use money, but we don’t live for it. We still do what we can to improve ourselves financially, but we’re also satisfied with what we have. We’re satisfied because we trust in God to take care of us, not in money.

Unlike money, God will never leave us; He will never slip away from us.

By John Huisman, friend of Bible League International