When you attend church, you prefer everything in the message to be positive and uplifting. You want to hear a message that makes you feel good. That is the modus operandi of most churches in the USA today. Pastors want more to be liked and have large crowds coming, than they do in teaching the hard things of the Bible. Consequently, there are several topics of which most pastors refrain from speaking. These include: self-control or discipline, Jesus as the “only” way to heaven, homosexuality, and anything related to the giving of money, just to name a few. Those so-called taboos are seldom preached from many pulpits in America.
To get church members talking, all the pastor has to do is to preach on giving money to the church. What is your view of the money you make? Do you give faithfully and consistently to the church you attend? A proper attitude about money is needed in today’s culture. An unknown source has put it this way, “When we place our contribution in the collection plate, we are not giving to the Lord; we are just taking our hands off what belongs to Him.” Acknowledging that is a true statement is one thing, but few Christians practice that principle. Statistics show that an extremely low percentage, around 10%, of all Christians that attend a church regularly actually consistently give to the Lord’s work in their local church.
Jesus, on several occasions, talked to His followers on the deceitfulness of riches. One such occasion is in Mark 12:42-44, “A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, ‘Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on.” Yes, it is extremely hard for wealthy Christians to put Christ before their wealth. Thus, Jesus’ words ring true in this 21st century Christian society, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10.25). How are you managing your money?
