Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | You have always protected him and his home and his property from all harm. You have prospered everything he does–look how rich he is! No wonder he “worships” you!  But just take away his wealth, and you’ll see him curse you to your face!”  (Job 1:10-11, Living Bible)

How much do you really need?  If everything you own was suddenly wiped out by a fire or a devastating storm, would you thank God that your life was spared, or curse because of the loss?

I asked myself that question one day when a friend and I noticed that smoke was coming out the window of a house.  For a moment we sat there, not believing what we saw.  Then we realized that the house was on fire.  I ran to a phone and called the fire department, but it was too late.  An oil stove had exploded and showered the fuel throughout the house.  By the time we called the fire department and ran to the house, the entire home was one blazing inferno.  There was no loss of life, but outside the flaming home stood a father and mother and a little girl about six years old.  The parents were almost beside themselves with grief.  How do you console someone in an hour like that?

The young father cried out, “My God‑‑ all is lost!”  The little girl put her hand on her daddy’s as her mother held her tightly in her arms and said, “Daddy, you got mommy and me…”  If that should happen to you, would you feel like giving up?  Or would you realize that with no loss of life or limb, what really counts is not what you have but rather what you are?

A Christian friend who did lose everything he owned in a fire, and could speak from experience, talks freely about the lessons God taught him through this; and the biggest one was the tragedy of building our lives around what we have.  No one enjoys living in poverty.  I have traveled too much in the world to ever buy that nonsense often wafted about today that the people who live in poverty are not bothered by what they don’t have, since they have never known what some of the things are that you have in your home.  Nonsense!  They hurt when their baby is sick, and there is no agency to provide medicine when there is no money.  They hurt when the cold of winter presses through the cardboard of a squatter’s shack‑‑a makeshift dwelling of discarded pieces of trash.

In recent years the affluence of some has become a sharper and more noticeable contrast to the poverty of others.  How much do you really need?  That, of course, is a question that has no pat answer, but it has readily become apparent that no one is so affluent that he can afford to disregard the needs of others today.  Evangelist Leighton Ford believes that the simple life which pleases God today is one that gets its priorities straightened out.  “We are going to have to lead simpler lives in the future,” says Ford.  No question about that.  The question is, “Will it be because we are forced to, or because we choose to?”

Every sincere man or woman must come to grips with the responsibility that we have to God in areas of our stewardship.  “Just what is ‘stewardship’?” you might ask.  That is an old English word that originally meant the supervision of another’s wealth or possessions.  Literally, a steward was a “house warden.”  He was the person to whom the master had entrusted his possessions, and the steward was directly responsible to the owner.  If you can begin to think of your possessions as a stewardship, lent to you by God, who someday will demand an accounting, you will begin to think of material goods and possessions in a different light.

With the changing world scene today, it has become apparent that everyone will have to change some of the ways we have done things; but the big question is, “Will it be because we are forced to, or because we choose to?”

Resource reading: Job 1:1-22