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Friends with Mammon

by Jerry Ousley  
10/20/2017 / Christian Living

All of us who work outside the home report to an individual who tells us what to do and gives us direction in our jobs.  That person may or may not be a believer in Jesus Christ. However it is highly advisable that we do what that person tells us to do as long as it isn’t illegal, immoral or against our Christian principles.  The reason for this is that if we don’t we may not have a job tomorrow.  We are subject to that person and that employer and depend on them for our daily income.

 Wouldn’t it be nice to not have to depend on someone else for our income? But we all do. Regardless what country we might live in or what our job is, even if we are the proprietors of our own business, we depend on others to make our living.  If we are self-employed we depend on getting business from other people whether they are believers or not.  If we turn down jobs because someone isn’t a Christian we probably won’t be in business very long.

The Apostle Paul depended on others to make his living.  He refused to take offerings from the congregations he visited, at least for himself, and the Bible tells us that he made his living as a tent maker.  Now the Bible doesn’t say this but if I were a betting man my money would be on the fact that Paul didn’t refuse to make a tent for a non-believer.

We have established that the word “Mammon” means “wealth personified.”  It is, in other words, the driving force of money – the greed and desire to have more and more as well as the power that goes along with it. There’s nothing wrong with money and thank God for that or we’d have a much rougher way to go in this world.  We all need to make a living.  Each country and society may have slightly different ideas of this concept but it is a fact in life.

In Luke 16:9 Jesus told us to make friends with mammon.  It does sound a bit strange to think about being friends with something that is so dangerous and detrimental to us and it sounds a bit like a contradiction with Matthew 6:24 (which is repeated in Luke 16:11).  In these verses Jesus told us that we can’t serve two masters and brought the illustration down to serving God and/or mammon.  We can’t serve two masters.  It would seem on the surface then that the best thing to do would be to flee mammon in order to resist temptation.

But Jesus also knew that we had to make a living.  So what is He saying here? He’s telling us that even though we must serve God it is smart to make friends with mammon being very careful not to become a slave to it.  We have to pay for things.  I couldn’t type this up, post it on the internet or tell you about it in the paper without mammon.  I have to buy the computer, pay for internet access, and pay for the website hosting it or this article wouldn’t even be possible.

It takes a wise individual to know how to make a living but also know how to stop short of serving mammon.  The key is always putting our true Master first.  As Christians we need to seek the Lord in our financial decisions.  We must avoid impulse buying in order to keep ourselves as free from debt as we possibly can.  Debt leads to a great temptation to serve mammon.  I’m not saying that debt is serving mammon but it most certainly can be because if we are too deep in debt then we put great pressure on ourselves to make more and more money.

Being friends with mammon is beneficial because if we fail we can lean on our financial sources. That’s what Jesus was saying. If we have been faithful to pay our financial obligations and we have been good stewards with what God has entrusted to us then when things get tough we’ve got something we can depend on.  Is this saying that God won’t take care of us? Absolutely not! But since Jesus told us this doesn’t it stand to reason that making friends with mammon is one of those God-given resources? So let me ask you, are you serving mammon or are you just friends?

Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge.

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