Your Real Life Is Not About What You Own

“Your true life is not made up of the things you own, no matter how rich you may be” (Luke 12:15 TEV).

The Bible has a lot of great advice on money management. Over half of Jesus’ parables deal with handling material possessions. In fact, Jesus spoke more about money than He did about either heaven or hell.

There are two common myths about money:

Myth #1: Money is evil. Actually money is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. What the Bible actually says is “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10 NIV).

Here’s the point: we are to use things and love people. When we get that reversed we get ourselves into trouble. If we love things, we will end up using people. God says people are always more important than possessions.

Myth #2: Money is the key to happiness. Obviously, that isn't true either. If money guaranteed happiness then those with the most would be the most happy. All you have to do is read the newspaper to explode that idea. Jesus said, “A man’s real life is not made up of the things he owns, no matter how rich he may be” (Luke 12:15 PH/TEV).

Think about this: “It is better—much better—to have wisdom and knowledge than gold and silver” (Proverbs 16:16 TEV).

Rick Warren