Let me talk about an elephant in the room for a few moments: debt among Americans has risen to epidemic proportions, and the truth is, by-and-large, Christians are not much different than non-Christians in this area.
The following story describes this situation well: A man was once boasting to an acquaintance, “We have a whole room full of furniture from France that goes back to Louis XIV.” “That’s nothing,” replied the other. “We’ve got a whole house full of furniture from Sears that goes back to Harry on the first.” We chuckle, but there’s more truth in that than we care to admit.
But what’s especially sad when you think about eternal realities is, due to the debt load so many of us carry, we are unable to support God’s work to much if any, degree. This may sound a little shocking, but basically what that means is the money God has entrusted us with to manage for His glory has become tied up in the devil’s kingdom. It is doing God’s cause on earth no good whatsoever, which is exactly what the devil wants. Doesn’t that make you stop and think? It does me.
It comes back to this fruit of the Spirit that we often overlook called self-control. We are bombarded constantly with marketing strategies to make us think we just can’t live without buying their product. I want to encourage each of us to ask God to seriously help us overcome those selfish urges by seeking the gift of self-control and by re-ordering our priorities away from earthly things to heavenly things, things that will last.