Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Centering

Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Don’t make your living by extortion or put your hope in stealing.  And if your wealth increases, don’t make it the center of your life.  God has spoken plainly, and I have heard it many times:  Power, O God, belongs to you; unfailing love, O Lord, is yours.  Surely you repay all people according to what they have done.  Psalm 62:10-12

Centering is the act of deciding on a focal point for your attention,  Related to life with faith in Christ, to center is putting every distraction, whether good things, or practices, on the outside of the center.  And barring access to all evil things.  Simply put, Christ must be the center of your life, or you violate the basic premise of being His disciple.  Christ is not a means to an end; He IS the end…the center point of the universe, and therefore, the target for everything we do.

The Psalmist held up the image of a powerful person (in a worldly sense), one who extorts secretly, or steals unashamedly, or both.  God says it plainly, this is dead-wrong.  But what about if your wealth increases honestly; even then the opportunity to sin is extant, if you allow wealth to become the center focus of your life.  The reason is, as the previous paragraph, it violates the priority God has laid out for believers – Jesus is the incontrovertible center of everything – money and power are a corrupting influence to the believer who would live godly.

And here’s an unsettling fact for those of us who might shrug that off, thinking since we are in no danger of being called “wealthy” by most of the world, it just doesn’t apply.  The reality of wealth is its’ relativity.  You can be just as centered on money when you’re on the poverty line, as you are living in a mansion you bought for $40-million dollars.

As a pastor, I’ve had much access to people’s thoughts as they share with me.  I have seen this principle of corruption at work in both the rich and poor, and everyone inbetween.  People on the margins of life are worrying about where the next meal might be found.  The person on the other side of the tracks, with cars, houses, and all kinds of toys and disposable income, fear that tomorrow’s stock report might take it all away.  Both persons are slave to things and the power to control them. 

But I have also known people on both sides of those economic tracks who trust God for everything.  They are those who are living the completely free life of a believer who is also a true disciple of Jesus.

For You Today

Let’s listen to Jesus for our final thought on this subject as he taught that famous Sermon on the Mount:

“No one can serve two masters.  For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.  “That is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life—whether you have enough food and drink, or enough clothes to wear.  Isn’t life more than food, and your body more than clothing? 

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.  “So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.  Matthew 6:24-25, 33-34

You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day!

Go to VIDEO (read by author)

There are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library.  To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some of these: 

Preciou$ Promi$e$ and Blank Check Theology  and Basic Trust; Basic Fear

[1] Images:  via Pixabay.com   Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©   

No comments:

Post a Comment