Welcome to the Victory Blog

This last weekend, I continued talking about having a vision for our financial lives. (If you missed that message, I encourage you to listen to or watch it here.) You see, our lives are a byproduct of the vision we have for them. This is as true for our finances as for any other part of our lives. If we don’t have a vision for our financial life, we will end up where a lot of people and our nation are today – in debt, in bankruptcy, in trouble.

God, however, wants us to get His vision for our finances so that we can be free of the world’s economy. God wants us to have an abundant life – one of blessing and peace. If we also want that, we need to understand how God thinks about money.

Now, listen, God doesn’t want our money. He doesn’t need it. What He cares about and wants is our hearts. However, He knows that our hearts follow our money, and that the way we view and use money has a direct correlation to where our hearts lie, whether with Him or with the world. Consequently, He urges us to give in ways that increase His kingdom and draw our hearts closer to Him.

Obviously, we aren’t taught this in the world. Rather, we’re taught to make more money to buy more stuff, to get rich and so on. Yet, Jesus is saying there’s a shift that we need to make under the new covenant. He has a different purpose for money.

The heart of God’s economy is not establishing our kingdoms in the earth, but in establishing His kingdom in the earth. He wants us to do things with our money that make a difference in people’s lives, things that have eternal value. Let me put that another way: God’s top priority for money is maximizing its use to establish His kingdom on the earth.

So, let me ask you, how connected do you think your goals for life are to God’s? How many of us ask at the beginning of each year, “What do we want to do with the money God has given us this year that will make a difference?” Or, better yet, “What does God want us to do with the money?” Ask yourself whether you’re going to spend the majority of your life:

1. Paying debts – living for the past?
2. Spending money – living for the present?
3. Saving/investing money – living for the future?
4. Giving money – living for eternity?

If we’re honest, way too many of us have been living in levels one and two. However, God’s desire is that we would spend the majority of our lives living for eternity by developing a lifestyle of giving. God intendeds for us to be rivers, not reservoirs.

God wants us to live abundant lives, but to have that, we have to surrender our wills and our minds to Him and be transformed. When we begin to seek His kingdom first, our vision begins to shift away from ourselves to making a difference in the lives of others. And, as we put our trust in God and put him first, He will work things out favorably for us. He will bless us, even in the midst of an economic downturn. So, do you have the vision now?