For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:21
“My definition of money for my purpose is simply this: Money is myself. I am a laboring man, we will say, and can handle a pickaxe, and I hire myself out for a week at $2.00 a day. At the close of the week I get $12.00, and I put it in my pocket. What is that $12.00? It is a week’s worth of my muscle put into greenbacks and pocketed; that is, I have got a week’s worth of myself in my pocket.
Now the moment you understand this, you begin to understand that money in your pocket is not merely silver and gold, but is something human, something that is instinct with power expended. Now, money is like electricity; it is stored power, and it is only a question as to where that power is to be loosed. What am I coming to is this — that this matter of the stored potentiality of myself in my pocket is so very serious that I need God’s Holy Spirit to guide me in it.
Do you see what a blessed, what a solemn thing this giving is, this giving of my stored self to my Master? Surely we need, in the matter of giving, consecrated thought as to where to loose ourselves; earnest prayer in the guidance of the choice of where to loose our stored power, and earnest prayer to God to add His blessing to the loosed personality in this money we have sent abroad, that there may come a tenfold increase because of the personal power we have sent.
When we think of money that way, and pray about it that way, and give it that way, and tell others of it, then we will have the Church of God saying: ‘Hasten the collection in the church. Quick! Let the ushers pass down that we may loose ourselves for Jesus’ sake, and send out stored power the world around for the sake of Him who gave Himself for us.’ That is consecrated use of money.”
A. F. Schauffler as quoted in “Study Two” of The New Christian: Studies in Stewardship by Ralph S. Cushman (New York: Centenary Conservation Committee, Methodist Episcopal Church, 1919) 25-26.
As I read through this stewardship series that’s nearly a century old, I resonate with the unashamed zeal of the writers who communicate with clarity and candor. For example, I love the expression “stored power” referring to money. Money does not define us, but connects with the deepest parts of us. When we store it up on earth, our heart remains here with it. When we store it up in heaven, our heart goes there with it. When we realize it is stored power and consecrate it to God, we become eager to put it to work in a manner that pleases our Master, the Owner of it.
What about your stored power? Does it need to be loosed and put in play?