Donald Guthrie: Are you content with food and clothing?

But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. 1 Timothy 6:8

“These words are a timely reminder of the weakness of a consumer society which is based on the assumption that possessions are a symbol of status. The credit boom would take a considerable bashing if this teaching were taken seriously. The fact is contentment does not come from owning whatever we want, for there is no end to what we want. A Christian approach to life can never make a central feature of the acquisition of material things.”

Donald Guthrie in The Pastoral Epistles (Downers’ Grove: IVP) 125.

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me…whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me. Matthew 25:40, 45

“One’s attitude toward the poor reveals one’s heart attitude toward Christ…No heart that loves Christ can be cold to the vulnerable and the needy…Anyone who has been touched by the grace of God will be vigorous in helping the poor.”

Tim Keller in Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just (New York: Dutton, 2010) 53-54.

If I sing but don’t have love
I waste my breath with every song
I bring an empty voice, a hollow noise
If I speak with a silver tongue
Convince a crowd but don’t have love
I leave a bitter taste with every word I say

So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love
Let my love look like You and what You’re made of
How You lived, how You died
Love is sacrifice
So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love

If I give
To a needy soul but don’t have love then who is poor?
It seems all the poverty is found in me

So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love
Let my love look like You and what You’re made of
How You lived, how You died
Love is sacrifice
Oh, let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love

When it’s all said and done
When we sing our final song
Only love remains
Only love remains

Let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love
Let my love look like You and what You’re made of
How You lived, how You died
Love is sacrifice
So let my life be the proof,
The proof of Your love

For King & Country: The Proof of Your Love
YouTube Music Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr9YVD05x8M&feature=related

After all the songs are sung
And our prayers for Kingdom come
Did we bring honor to the words we sing?

Does our worship have hands?
Does it have feet?
Does it stand up in the face of injustice?
Does our worship bow down?
Does it run deep?

Is it more than a song
That fades with our voices?
Does it fade with our voices?

Lord, it’s you we long to please
Make our lives a melody
That we proclaim
When we live in Jesus name

So if we raise our hands high
Let us also reach them out
And if we lift our voices up
Let it be the sound of love

Let our worship have hands
Let it have feet
Let it stand tall in the face of injustice
Let our worship bow down
Let it run deep

And be more than a song
That fades with our voices
It’s more than a song
That fades with our voices
It won’t fade with our voices
(Let it be the sound of love)

Fade With Our Voices Jason Gray
Album: Everything Sad is Coming Untrue

Today’s meditation is posted in honor of special friends, Bill and Laurie Bolthouse, for their willingness to stand in the face of the injustice of human trafficking. We stand with them. Tonight at the Breckenridge Film Festival, Sammy and I are attending a special viewing of the motion picture they produced in present-day Southeast Asia, Trade of Innocents, a story of struggle and hope in the dangerous world of human trafficking. Thanks for the way your worship has hands and feet, Bill and Laurie!

“God is not as concerned with the portion of money I give away in his name as he is with what we do with the portion that I keep for myself.”

Ralph Wetherington, pastor of West Congregational Church in Peabody, MA, in Becoming a Healthy Church: 10 Traits of a Vital Ministry by Stephen A. Macchia (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999) 207-208.

“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.

“The healthy church teaches its members that they are stewards of their God-given resources and challenges them to sacrificial generosity in sharing with others.”

Stephen A. Macchia in Becoming a Healthy Church: 10 Traits of a Vital Ministry (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999) 197.

“The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy.” (Cf. Matthew 25:31-46).

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945) in Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community (New York: HarperCollins) 20.

“God does bless in temporal ways those who put implicit trust in Him.”

Oswald Chamber (1874-1917) in a letter dated 23 June 1897 as recorded in Abandoned to God by David McCasland (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 1993) 67.

“My observation and experience of all the flourishing nations everywhere, what is taking place, so help me God, is nothing but a conspiracy of the rich…these depraved creatures, in their insatiable greed, have divided among themselves all the goods which would have sufficed for everyone…where everything belongs to everyone, no one doubts that (as long as care is taken that the public storehouses are full) nothing whatever will be lacking for anyone for his own use. For the distribution of good is not niggardly; no one is a pauper or beggar there, and though no one has anything, all are rich.

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) Utopia (Yale University Press, 2001) 130-132.