Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. 1 Peter 2:11
“The New Testament does not present a come-see religion, but a go-tell religion . . . The implications of this are huge for the way we live and the way we think about money and lifestyle. One of the main implications is that we are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11) on the earth. We do not use this world as though it were our primary home. “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Philippians 3:20).
This leads to a wartime lifestyle. That means we don’t amass wealth to show the world how rich our God can make us. We work hard and seek a wartime austerity for the cause of spreading the gospel to the ends of the earth. We maximize giving to the war effort, not comforts at home . . . The emphasis of the New Testament is not riches to lure us in to sin, but sacrifice to carry us out.”
John Piper in Let the Nations Be Glad!: The Supremacy of God in Missions, third edition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010) 29.
Are your finances aligned with the spiritual war that is raging around us? Lent is a great time to adopt a “wartime lifestyle” linked to money. As Piper puts it, “The emphasis of the New Testament is not riches to lure us in to sin, but sacrifice to carry us out.” Sacrifice is about forgoing financial expenditures so the funds can be in deployment on mission. Remember, we are “temporary residents and foreigners” here. Our home is in heaven. Let’s store our treasures there!