“The biggest mistake I make with money is asking God to give me a lot of it. You don’t often hear people say they mess up with their finances in this way…But the problem is, money isn’t always what God’s provision looks like. When we only ask for money, we’re taking a very narrow view of how God might choose to provide for us…Maybe it will be with money. Maybe it will be something better…
Too often, we’ve set up money as our solution rather than God. The danger in doing this, is that when it comes to praying for God’s provision, what we can actually end up doing is not praying for God at all. We instead pray for money, man’s solution rather than God’s solution. And this so often makes us blind to how God truly is providing for us.”
Neal Samudre in Relevant blog post entitled “Should We Ask God For Money? Why we often get it wrong in praying for God’s provision” on 28 May 2014, brought to my attention by one of my former students, Peter Goehring.
Do we need more money or more God? This idea that Neal Samudre touches on, that we have been pleading for the former when we really need more of the latter, is among the central themes of the book I recently co-authored, The Choice: The Christ-Centered Pursuit of Kingdom Outcomes.
Today I am doing an all-day seminar for ministry leaders in Guatemala City based on The Choice. Pray with me that the Holy Spirit will help them make the decision to pursue God’s solution rather than man’s solution to the challenges they face.
When any of us think money is the answer to our problems, we adopt man’s solution. To make matters worse, this decision causes us to becomes slaves to mammon, and it blinds us to how God is already providing for our needs.