Are you trapped in the tyranny of things? It can happen to any of us at any age. A wealthy man was moving into a new house, and his next-door neighbor happened to be a Quaker. The Quakers, as you know, believe in simplicity and plainness of life. The Quaker neighbor watched as the movers carted in numerous pieces of furniture, a great deal of clothing, and many decorative pieces. Then he walked over to his wealthy new neighbor and said in his quaint Quaker way, “Neighbor, if thee hath need of anything, please come to see me and I will tell thee how to get along without it.” Jesus would have agreed with that advice, for He said one day, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15, NIV).It is easy to get wrapped up in our stuff. It comes naturally to us to be materialistic. We want more stuff, better stuff, newer stuff, the stuff our neighbors have and the stuff we see advertised on television. We spend huge amounts of time and energy worrying about our stuff, protecting our stuff and caring for our stuff and cleaning our stuff.
Today we began a January sermon series to try and address our obsession with the "kingdom of thingdom". We are in uncertain times economically. One thing that can happen in such times is that anything we don't have tied down tight...anywhere in our financial life where our house is not in order, our shortcuts are revealed quickly.
We want to do all we can as a church to provide practical help for getting our financial health in place in 2009. In addition to our sermon series, we are offering Financial Peace University. We have tapes of our friend, Bruce Ammons and his Conquering Debt God's Way seminar available for check-out. Here are some good Christian websites with abundant resources to help as well:
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