Conquering Money

Remember the verse on Matthew 6:24, when Jesus said:

24 "No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money."

This verse needs thorough understanding because on the other hand, money is crucial to live our life.

Now, here is my take on this verse. Try to look at the other side of the lense. 

Somehow, I got confused by this verse because money also serves a purpose in our life. But we can not have this life as well without the giver of life which is God, right?

Until I became broke and my finances becomes a mess due to wrong management of money. I thought if I am soft on handling my money, it means that I am not vowing my head on money - well, that thought my friend is a very big trap. 

Money will conquer us if we don't manage it properly. Financial management is a very crucial skill to learn at a very young age until we get old as long as we live because money is a tool we need to live. We need to eat in order to survive and we need money to buy our food. And God knows it.

When you are broke and goes to work everyday for the sake of paying bills and debts, you will never had the time serving God. Because your mind is too busy making money to make ends meet. And you were only living to make money, when you have no time for the Lord, then God is absent in your life. How can we know and worship God if we doesn't have time with Him?

In any kind of relationship, might it be love relationship, friendship, family, an absence of time to your loved ones becomes a problem and will ruin the relationship. 

Long distance relationship might not be a problem but absence of time will destroy any kind of relationship. Not devoting a part of your time will not enhance any kind of relationship. The same with the Lord, you will not develop a relationship with Him, if you do not have enough time for Him.

So, "time" is important.

They say "Time is Money" and that is true in some sense. If you have the money, then you have the time. And if you have the time, then you can use it to serve the Lord.

So, if we are piled up by debts which becomes the vain reason of working, then that is the time when we became slaves of Money. We are now very much dedicated to work hard than we used to just to make the money we need to make ends meet.

I remember when the old people said that life is much easier during their time. Yes, I agree to that. Because credit card is not invented yet during their time. People learned to live through their means, living life frugally.

Credit cards and debts are portals to becoming slaves of money. The self-discipline of saving money to buy one thing has gone. People turned to the easiest route of doing things. And getting the pleasure of the things we want becomes easy through the use of credit cards and debts.

We work everyday and received our salary not to manage it anymore but to pay the credit card bills, only to use it again. Once the cycle has started, it goes continuously without end.

Instead of saving the money we earned, we chose to pay the interest of debts for instant gratification of our pleasures. Binding our time to work for the sake of paying those interests is just like becoming slaves to money.

Be it good debt or bad debt, a debt is still a debt. A good debt might turn into more profit because it's like using other people's money to earn. Until it becomes an addiction. And still, you became a slave of money for it gives you happiness to earn more.

Jesus said as written on Matthew 6:21,

"Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be."

And then, you'll forget about God because you are too busy making more and more money because it now becomes your addiction.

Jesus said on Matthew 4:4:

"People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."

We become slaves of money if we are bound to debt and if money becomes our addiction.

But, don't get me wrong, we need money in order to serve God, and others, as well as ourselves. But not to the point that we became slaves to money and became addicted to it. As Jesus said,

"No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money."

In order to conquer money and not to become a slave of it is to -- manage it properly. 

Giving a part of it to God which is called "tithing" serves as our offering of the fruits we harvested, or in the modern era, the harvested fruits is the money we earned from the time, energy and skills we dedicate to do our work, that God also gave - the time, energy and skills are the gifts we received from God.

But, what happens now is that we offer that percentage of our earning to paying debt interests instead of the ability of our money to tithe.

A Jewish Way of Managing Money

I have adapted a very practical method that Jewish use in managing their finances.

Jar 1. 10% is for Tithing

Jar 2. 10% is for giving or sharing to the less fortunate, act of charity.

Jar 3. 20% Savings. It could be an emergency cash fund or something that you want to buy like house or car, etc.

Jar 4. 10% Investment. It is the money that you could use to earn through short or long term businesses, as with the saying, Money begets Money. It is like the seed you took out from the fruits of your harvest to plant again.

Jar 5. 50% Expenses. It is for all the expenses you have in order to survive like food, home rent, utilities, etc.

No wonder why the jewish are better in terms of business and finances. They have have adapted the rules and laws about money from the ancient scriptures - the Old Testaments of the Bible.

Who is Matthew?

By the way, on this post, I have mentioned the verses according to the Gospel of Matthew. Well, who is Matthew by the time of our Lord Jesus?

Matthew is also known as St. Matthew the Evangelist, one of the 12 apostles of Jesus described in the Bible as the tax collector.

His profession before becoming a follower of Jesus was a tax collector and that profession is also about money. No wonder why Matthew written the words of Jesus about money.

If you are interested to read more about the Gospel of Matthew, the first book of the New Testament, you can find it on this link.