Can You Walk Away from Money?

"When you can walk away from money, you have mastered it," says Mike Murdock.

Do you believe that?

I think I do.

Can you guess why?

Money is such a magnet that most of us are attracted to it because of our own meanings, and definitions for it, and how we'll use it. It represents whatever is our dream and goal, so we keep reaching for it.

That's why people still put out those ads and web pages that scream, "You can make $90,000 in 30 days without even trying! Come n' Git it!"

Hey, I know because that's the first Internet scam I fell for back in 1999. I wanted to believe that so much I was willing to risk something to try it.

But I've also spent some long hours over many years in conversation with the Lord, and I have another set of values and virtues. Most likely you do too.

The correct view is that money comes to us through people, not FROM people. Ultimately, it is a tool that God puts into our hands to do good with, to care for our families, and to further His kingdom.

However, usually God tests us first to see if we know how to use money like a tool that He hands us. If we don't "get it right" money becomes a snare to us, and leads us astray to sins of pride and selfishness. Or, we can also be tempted with longing and desire and sins like covetousness, lying, stealing, immorality, all kinds of evil just in trying to get money.

Those paths can ruin our lives, and although we can always stop in our tracts and change our attitudes, they can delay and mess up our lives something miserable.

Just the way some children only need a rebuke, and some need a serious spanking to forsake wrong habits, some folks get the principle early and clear in their lives; look to God, not people for your financial supply and resources. If you can walk away from money when it is offered in an illegal or unwholesome way, you close to being able to treat it as nothing more than a tool.

That's the point where God shifts our curriculum and start to teach us how to use that tool - money - with skill and finesse.

Ah-h-h! That's the course I most want to learn now!

Guess what; I have an exam before me where I can show that I can walk away from money. I tremble with some nervousness, but I hope to pass this test, and graduate to that skills course.

Look around, I bet you have such a test on your horizon too! Remember, what you walk away from determines what God will bring to you.

Hey, sometimes this exam hammers us every day, and even hour and hour. Keep saying "No," when that is the right answer until you have the upper hand. Eventually, God's higher principles will be ingrained, and you'll handle money like a master.