Dave Ramsey is one of my favorite radio personalities. I appreciate the common sense approach he has to handling money and the fact that he counsels people using a biblical worldview. As he has pointed out, the bible has quite a bit to say about money and how we should use it. In my opinion, the verses recorded at the end of Matthew chapter 6 are some of the clearest directives in scripture regarding how the people of God should view money.
First of all, as we study this section of scripture, we will observe that how we use money is indicative of our heart attitude. We are told in verse 21 that where our heart will be where our treasure is located. Our trust should be in God, but we can sinfully allow our hearts to trust in money to take care of our daily needs (vs 25-34) or we can actually make money a god unto itself (v 24). Secondly, we are challenged to trust God rather than money. Jesus does not make suggestions as we read these verses—in fact, they are commandments. The result of having a right heart attitude toward money and placing our faith in God rather than worldly riches is that we are able to use money to glorify God. We can make decisions that honor and exalt Him because we know that, ultimately, we are not responsible for ourselves but we can trust in the fact that God truly is our Shepherd and will meet our needs.
In the end, having a right view of material possessions gives us opportunities to minister to folks. When we find out about needs (i.e. someone comes to us and tells us there are going to be out of work for a short time) we can help meet those needs rather than passing the buck to someone else. When we know about missionaries and ministries that need help, we can share our resources so that God’s kingdom is advanced. Recognizing that we are simply stewards of these resources, we should invest in the kingdom of God. However, we will only make that investment when we have the right attitude toward the money that God has entrusted to us.
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