Stuff

Everybody wants to have purpose for living. Rick Warren made millions on his book “The Purpose Driven Life,” because everyone wants to live a purpose driven life.

God has given us a mission and a purpose for us to exist (read last week blog)– You and I are here to make more and better disciples. How you go about doing that is up to you.  Our purpose for living has been given to us by God. For a multitude of reasons we get side tracked.  One of those reasons is that we like to have stuff and a lots of it.  Watch this video clip as George Carlin makes a very subtle point and makes fun of our stuff (yes the video is edited). The video only last a couple of minutes (click here to view it).

George Carlin makes fun of the mountain of stuff we compile. His assertion is that “a house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. We place our stuff in the house and leave it there while we go out and get more stuff.”

We never know how much stuff we have accumulated until we either need to rent a moving truck or we see a fire truck in front of our house. We like to accumulate stuff. We like stuff.  If we need to move or have a fire burn our house down we realize how much stuff we have. When we moved here seven years ago I was going through our stuff deciding what to take and what to put in the dumpster. I found a cheese slicer that we got as a wedding gift – that had never been opened.  Every time we moved – we moved that cheese slicer.  For some reason I was attached to this cheese slicer because I saw it every time we have moved.  It didn’t make the trip to Marion. I am hoping it has a happy home.

Having stuff is not evil nor will having it keep you out of heaven. It just opens up a bottle neck of questions. How much stuff do we need? How much is enough? Why do like to accumulate and hoard things?  Why are we never content with what we have? Why do we get so emotionally attached to our stuff that we can’t give it up?  Why do we get more stuff when we already have a bunch of stuff?

Jesus makes some very strong statements about our stuff. Statements that we will probably never see on a plaque sold in a Christian book store. There is a reason why Christian bookstores don’t put those kind of plaques in their stores. Nobody would buy them. These kind of plaques don’t inspire us to do great things for God– they force us to ask difficult questions

The first plaque you will never see is Matthew 6:21

For where your treasure is
there your heart will be also.

This verse forces us  to ask some hard questions – where do I put my treasure? Do I invest it in the things of eternity? Or do I invest it in things that will rust, decay, and break down. Do I like to accumulate stuff or do I like to accumulate souls?

I don’t know about you but these kinds of questions makes me feel uneasy. But this scripture also forces me to ask, “What do I need or don’t I need to accomplish my mission?”  If you know your mission then you will know exactly what you need to accomplish your mission. Like when you are going on a vacation. You can’t take everything with you. You take what  you need. You have a destination and you know you can’t take everything.

Do you use your stuff to accumulate souls?

A second plaque you will never see sold is Luke 12:33

³³ “Sell your possessions and give to those in need. This will store up treasure for you
in heaven! And the purses of heaven never get old or develop holes. Your treasure
will be safe; no thief can steal it and no moth can destroy it. 

This verse forces us to ask the question: What do I need to give up in order to accomplish my mission?

My daughter Lyndsay made a life changing decision a few months ago to give up everything to teach third graders in the DR. That was a tough decision. Part of the reason it was a tough decision was because she had to give up a lot of stuff. I took up an inventory of the things she left behind:

• Ipad
• Income
• A house
• Her family
• Her car
• Her furniture
• Her house

She traded her stuff in for making treasurers in heaven.

We find safety and security in our stuff.  It is a risk to give up our stuff because once you give it up it is not yours anymore. My cheese slicer stayed with me for 18 years and I don’t even like cheese. It was hard to let go of it.  I kept moving it from house to house. I am hoping now  it is a safe home and being taken care of and used.

The third plaque you would never find sold  is Luke 12:15:

Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.

The Message says it this way – ¹⁵ Speaking to the people, he went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.”

Once again we are once forced to ask a difficult question – Are we allowing the stuff we have to define who we are?

If you are defining yourself by what you have or don’t have then you are greedy.  You don’t have to be rich or have a lot of stuff to be greedy. Just because you have a lot of money or stuff doesn’t make you greedy. But when you define your life by what you have and don’t have that’s when you know greed has set in. In other words your greed is not about what you have or don’t have, it comes out of a selfish and self-centered heart. Greed buys things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.

Greed is a terrible thing. It is one of the seven deadly sins. It can destroy you.

Jesus said that Greed was one of the attitudes that can make us unclean.
“For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, GREED, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘UNCLEAN.’” Mark 7:21-23

Romans 1:29 declares that (godless and wicked men) “have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, GREED and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.”

And Ephesians 5:3 warns us that “among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of GREED, because these are improper for God’s holy people.”

Greed is equated with wickedness, godlessness, adultery, slander, murder, etc. And is amongst top 10 of just about any list in Scripture of sin. In fact, Colossians 3:5 condemns greed, saying it is idolatry.

• It is not greed to own stuff or even to have stuff.  It is not even idolatry.
  Abraham was a wealthy man with flocks of sheep and herds of cattle but he
  wasn’t greedy

  • Jacob had a multitude of sheep and cattle and camels but he wasn’t greedy

  • David was a wealthy King. All you need to do read how much money he set aside
  for the building of the Temple but he wasn’t greedy.

What’s the difference?

These wealthy people were not condemned. Why? Because they were rich toward God.

They were focused on their mission on what God called them to do.

They put more trust in HIM than they did in their fortunes and possessions.

They listened for God. They looked for God. They longed for God.

That’s the difference between owning stuff and your stuff owning you. You can’t serve your stuff and God. It is physically, emotionally,  and spiritually impossible. The scriptures have warned us about the dangers of greed. It can destroy you. It can distort your view of life.  It can ruin your life. Someone asked a wealthy man what it would take to make him happy and he replied: “Just one more dollar.”

Greed is that ongoing belief that if I can only get enough money, if only we can get that I thing I can be safe and secure.  Jesus is saying to us back in Luke Are you tempted by worry? Are you tempted by greed? Then “Sell your possessions and give them to the poor.”

What’s the answer to greed?

Plaque number four you might you might find sold in a Christian book store:

Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 

I Timothy 6:6-8 

Contentment says,

“I’m okay with it and I’m okay without it. I would like it, it would be nice, but I do not need it in order to be whole.” Contentment is having a heart that is alive to God and to the people around us when we don’t have what we want. Contentment allows us to focus on the mission that God has called us to and not our stuff.

Greed is selfishness. Contentment is selflessness

Green wants more stuff.  Contentment wants to use that stuff to accomplish the mission God has given.

The choice is really up to you. You just need to answer one more question:

Do you want to go on the adventure?