YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH, WHICH ONE DO YOU CHOOSE?

BIBLE PASSAGE:
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and
love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
(Matthew 6:24)

MEDITATION:
Have you ever heard the phrase,
    “When you try to please everyone, you please nobody”
It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Since we have varied likes and dislikes,
whenever we please one person, there is a good chance that we will offend
someone else.

This is probably the reason there are two major political parties. One party
is extremely liberal and wants to give people enough to make them slaves to
the government. The other party is conservative with a desire to control
spending and prevent the country from going into deeper debt. Obviously,
these two are diametrically opposed to each other.

The scriptures tell us we have a similar problem whenever we try to serve
two different masters. Serving one is an action that does not align with the
other. If our focus is on money, then we have less time for God. If our focus
is on God, chasing money and fame is not important to us; we can be happy
with ‘enough’ instead of spending our lives trying to get ‘more’.

We see it all the time in our society, don’t we? People who used to look
forward to enjoying worship time with other believers, suddenly start
attending sporadically or they drop out of attendance altogether. As an
example, after some acquire a new ski boat, weekend retreat, new golf
clubs, etc. they have less time for worshipping with other believers.

The time that was once dedicated to the Lord is now being dominated
by what their money provides for them. A heart that was once close to
God, has moved closer to his or her wallet. People spend much more on
luxuries and non-essentials than they do on supporting charitable and
religious institutions, which includes obeying God’s command to tithe.

Money has caused some to discontinue their service to the Lord. Today’s
adage seems to be:
    “Get all you can, spend all you can,
       borrow all you can and give meagerly to God.”
This change in attitude doesn’t happen suddenly; it’s a subtle transition.

Some seem to think that a little less time or money for God, means a little
more for them to use in buying what they want and spending their time
enjoying it. Before we know it that ‘little less’ becomes a ‘big less’ and it
can cause us to wonder what has happened to our relationship with the
Lord. We may even ask ourselves, “Why does God seem so far away?”.

When the scriptures tell us that we cannot serve God and money,
we can be sure that one will steal our attention from the other. It
also means we must make a choice of where our allegiance will be.
According to God, we can have one or the other, but we can’t have
both. Making money is not the problem, the issue is how we allow
the money to control us and steal our time and money that belongs
to God.

ACTION:
Questions to consider:
    – Am I trying to serve two masters?
    – Have I lost the joy of spending time with the Lord?
    – Is anything taking the place of the time I used to spend with the Lord?
    – Have I reduced the amount of money (tithes and other contributions)
       that I have been giving to His service?

Pray,
“Heavenly Father, I don’t want anything to stand between You and me.
I don’t want to lose the relationship I had with You when You first saved
me. Make me aware of anything that has caused my dedication to You
to diminish, so I can eliminate it and regain the joy of my fellowship with
You and other believers, and find joy again in contributing to Your plans
for me. Remind me to remain focused on my eternal home instead of using
my time and money to chase worldly satisfaction.”

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