“The foundational spiritual principle related to money is this: God is the owner of it all, and we are the managers. The Bible says, “You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth” (Deut 8:17-18).
The principle carries with it some very important implications: First, if God owns it all, then He has all of the rights to what He owns. And since I only have what has been given to me, what I’ve been allowed to have, then I operate primarily in the realm of responsibilities. That means that when it comes to money, there is a trust relationship between me and God. God has trusted me with certain resources that, in truth, He owns and has rights to. My job is to live by that trust by managing it well, according to His design and desire. He trusts me to do it.
A second implication is that if God owns it all, and I am someone who has simply been given the responsibility to manage those resources in a way that honors Him, then every financial decision is a spiritual decision. Whether it’s buying a car, taking a vacation, investing in a mutual fund, paying taxes, or buying groceries—every spending decision is a spiritual decision, because I am managing the resources God has given me to manage. God cannot be shut out of any transaction, excluded from any purchase, omitted from any decision, or removed from any investment. It is, after all, His money.
A final implication is that we are all accountable to God for this management. If all the money is His, and we are the managers of what He’s allowed us to have, then ultimately we are accountable to Him for our money management. We’ll all stand before a holy God one day and give an accounting for how we did with what He gave.”
James Emery White in You Can Experience a Spiritual Life (Word, 1999), Chapter 9.