Luke 16:9
Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home. (NLT)
This is an unusual verse. Is Jesus instructing us to buy friends? Doesn’t He remember the parable of the Prodigal Son? After the prodigal’s money ran out, all of his friends left (Luke 15:11-32).
What does money mean to God? Money is a tool. Money doesn’t meet our needs. God meets our needs. God provides abilities, skills and opportunities, but He also blesses us in ways that we certainly don’t expect or deserve. Money is not the provider.
Jesus is instructing us to use our money to help other people. Rather than allowing money to win over our trust and possess us, Jesus says we should use money to help other people. One insight here: Jesus wants us to use our actual money in the bank, not our credit cards. The Bible instructs us in many places about the slavery of debt (Proverbs 22:7).
Generosity is the antidote to selfishness. Blessing others by helping those in need or celebrating someone we love puts our money on deposit in our “eternal home.” When a person dies, someone typically asks, “How much did he leave behind?” The reality is the deceased person left it all behind.
How can you bless someone else in a tangible way today? Take a friend to lunch. Pay for the lunch of the stranger behind you in the drive-thru. Buy a bag of groceries and put it on the doorstep of someone who just lost their job. How can you convert your money into eternal currency today?
Copyright © 2009 by Allen White
All Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation. Copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
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