“Rich Toward God”
Someone in the crowd said to him,
“Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me.” But he
said to him, “Friend, who set me to be a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he
said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for
one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Then he told them
a parable: “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to
himself, ‘What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he
said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and
there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul,
you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ But
God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you.
And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”
So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich
toward God.”
The Bible calls the pursuit of more stuff,
“greed.” Jesus warned His followers about greed by telling a story about a rich
man. The story told of a man who had invested his entire life in his
possessions. Rejecting the knowledge and precepts of God as the basis for life
made him a fool. He was living for the moment while presuming on the future.
At the end of your days make sure that
you have been rich toward God, rather than looking after yourself.
Poverty of
purpose is worse than poverty of purse.
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