Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] You're listening to a live recording from Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:07] It's funny. We are. It is Mother's Day. We actually don't do a lot of themes around, like, holidays and stuff like this. I know. I've been to a lot of churches, taught some messages. Even around, like, Father's Day and things. Today we're talking about money and anxiety. Okay.
[00:00:21] Which is not related. It's just. It's just where we're at in the text. Okay.
[00:00:26] My wife and I were driving home from a dinner last night, and she said, where are you at and what you're preaching tomorrow? And I told her, and she was like, you cannot be serious on Mother's Day. Sorry.
[00:00:35] Blame it on how Matthew is distributed and where we started this series of talks.
[00:00:42] So we're going to start in Matthew, chapter 6 and in verse 19.
[00:00:46] And this will help frame where we're going today. It's the centerpiece text, so it says this. Don't store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
[00:01:09] Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. And when your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness. And if the light you think you have is actually darkness, how deep that darkness is.
[00:01:25] No one can serve two masters, for you will hate one and love the other, and you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.
[00:01:35] Your boy.
[00:01:38] What just happened? Oh, to money. This is why I tell you not to worry about everyday life. Whether you have enough food and drink or enough clothes to wear.
[00:01:47] Isn't life more than food and your body more than clothing? And look at the birds. They don't plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your Heavenly Father feeds them. And aren't you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life? And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. And they don't work or make their clothing. Yet Solomon in all of his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that they are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you, why do you have so little faith? Don't worry about these things, saying, what will we eat? Or what will we drink? What will we wear? These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers. But your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. 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.
[00:02:41] Let's pray. Father God, we thank you for this.
[00:02:44] What is really clear is a challenging word, even just upon reading the simple teaching.
[00:02:50] Pray that we would be open to our hearts being moved by you today. That we wouldn't just be inspired to different actions, but instead that we would be inspired for our hearts to be transformed by you. In Jesus name, amen.
[00:03:04] How many of you are familiar with McMinnville? Anybody? Yeah, some of you. Just about three hours away, not too far. McMinnville, I think slowly becoming a part of all of Oregon, becoming its own kind of wine country.
[00:03:16] I grew up in southern Oregon, and all of a sudden there's these vineyards popping up in different places and kind of, I gotta be honest, kind of beautifying a lot of places that were not necessarily beautiful in and of themselves. And McMinnville in and of itself is a really cool. I don't know, it's a cool little town I've got an affinity for.
[00:03:33] And in McMinnville, I don't know if you're familiar with this. There's actually the largest wooden aircraft ever built, and it was built by Howard Hughes. And he spent years and this fortune kind of constructing it. And it flew exactly one time, and it flew for one mile, and now it just sits there.
[00:03:55] It's actually a pretty good summary of this guy who built the plane in the first place of his life. Howard Hughes.
[00:04:01] At his peak, he was the most powerful man in America. He was an aviator, a filmmaker, a defense contractor, and he owned airlines and casinos and entire city blocks of Las Vegas.
[00:04:12] I guess you could say if money could buy something like security and our own personal value, he probably had enough money to buy it twice over.
[00:04:21] But he spent the last 20 years of his life in a sealed, darkened hotel rooms, naked and barely eating, addicted to narcotics and tranquilizers. His fingernails had grown into long, curling claws, and he weighed less than £90. When he died, the people that were around him, they weren't friends, they were aides whose only job was to help him keep from completely unraveling the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who wrote the definitive biography landed on this as their final word. That he bestrode the world like a colossus, and yet he could not master himself.
[00:04:58] And I think Jesus's invitation in this passage of Scripture is a kind of preventative for the tendency in all of us to end up much like Howard Hughes.
[00:05:10] Maybe that's an extreme version, but I think if left to our own devices, and especially if left out of the discipleship that Jesus is challenging us into, I think we could end up much the same.
[00:05:24] Addicted to things that simply short term stave off our own insecurities and irrationalities and problems.
[00:05:33] And so when we talk about money today and we talk about anxiety, I want to make it really clear on the front end that this isn't going to be some kind of sales pitch to give more to the church, which I think giving to the church is awesome, and we will talk about that too.
[00:05:47] Degree this is about entering into a kind of discipleship that allows us to live a life of actual fullness and abundance and Jesus kind of living.
[00:06:00] That's how our relationship needs to be with money. We have to handle it in a way that allows us to live the life that God is calling us to live, which actually helps us understand empathy. It actually creates more fullness and fun and enjoyment in this life. And it prevents us falling in love with simply money for the sake of money, which can become its own God. And instead it invites us to be someone else completely different.
[00:06:27] Because my understanding and what I've experienced in my own life, as well as viewing the lives of others, is that money kind of has this way of quietly moving from a tool that belongs in our hands into something that is controlling our hearts.
[00:06:41] And I think Jesus knows this, which is why in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, he does this kind of extended talk about treasure and vision and anxiety and trust. And I don't know about you, I've been open about this before. Like, Scripture can be really confusing to me. Which things go where and why. It's in a certain kind of specific order. We talked about as we went through the Gospel of John over the last several months, that John actually took a lot of the stories and he put them out of order so that he could tell the story of Jesus in a bit of a different way. And on first reading through this section of Scripture in Matthew chapter six, I kind of feel like things got jumbled and put in a weird order.
[00:07:18] There's treasure in heaven, and then Jesus talks about healthy eyes and then serving two masters and then all of a sudden, he's talking about nature and birds and flowers. You know, it's kind of hippie Jesus at that second, you know, and then it's worry and anxiety. But Jesus is actually creating this very unified teaching that's really powerful if we see it for what it is. Because money has this power to shape how we see, which is why he brings up the eyes. It also tells us what controls us, and ultimately it determines how we live. And so there's three sections of this teaching that I want to walk through and talk with you today, and they are this. How money can blind us.
[00:07:52] How it reveals what controls us.
[00:07:56] And we also have to learn. And Jesus teaches us in this how we can break its power over us. So the first section is how money can blind us.
[00:08:04] Now, Jesus talks about this kind of money sin, but I think a lot of the words that are used in Scripture and how it's translated, for some reason, they just don't work for a lot of us. Like, they don't kind of impact the soul. They don't actually penetrate the soul. Because when we see greed in scripture, at least for me, it's very easy to think that that is someone else's sin.
[00:08:26] I've never, like, come from what I would consider to be a lot of money. I don't necessarily feel like a rich person right here at this moment. And so when I hear greed, I think, yeah, you know, Mr. Scrooge in a Christmas Carol, what a terrible guy. Should have put more coal on the fire and should have been nicer to Kermit the Frog who was working for him. You know, that's the Muppet version. Not that, like, what a jerk. So greedy. And he just wanted, oh, my gosh. And maybe there's people in your mind, you can think of people that. That come through the news, and it's the billionaires, and it's this. And these people are. Those are the greedy people. And then they need to repent and they need to come somewhere else. But the thing that Jesus is talking about is he's talking about in every single one of us, because largely the group of people that are listening to this teaching are poor people.
[00:09:10] And so it's not just about this idea of greed or kind of this romanticized or, like, film version that we have of greed. He's talking about how money, the sin of how we understand money and how it can control us, actually can become its own God for us.
[00:09:28] And everybody is susceptible to being blind as a result of how we understand money.
[00:09:34] And so what Jesus is saying is that what you treasure actually shapes what you see and how you see.
[00:09:43] And so first we have to see that this can actually be us. Jesus says in, In Luke chapter 12, he actually says, watch out and be on your guard against all forms of greed. Jesus doesn't do this a whole lot. There's not a whole lot of things Jesus says and then there's this big exclamation point that exists at the end of it, but it does right here. And he's specifically talking about greed. Why does it say watch out? He doesn't say watch out because you might be committing adultery.
[00:10:09] Because usually the person who's committing adultery doesn't need this kind of revelation and go, oh my gosh, you're right, I had no idea. That came out of nowhere.
[00:10:21] Adultery. I've been committing it for a long time and had no idea.
[00:10:26] That was way more uncomfortable than I anticipated it would be.
[00:10:32] We're actually, we're actually going to change the topic of today's sermon.
[00:10:38] And he says, watch out because greed has this kind of sneaky way of coming into our lives. It's.
[00:10:46] And a lot of it is because I think we live in this relative economic society, right? We don't live in this kind of old Victorian era England kind of, you know, there's all these different classes and then they're divided by these really thick concrete blocks. And you wouldn't, I think we live in this relative society where we always know what step is exactly next with what we could buy, what we could afford, the circles of people that we could be around. And I think all of us, no matter how much we make or how much value we actually have, can so easily fall for the trap of feeling like we aren't quite doing and making enough.
[00:11:21] And I, you know, you guys know, I watch a lot of sports and sometimes I listen to people in contract negotiations that are about to get, you know, half a billion dollars in a 10 year contract. And I'll listen to them say things like, you know what, I'm really just trying to feed my family. And I'm like, well, what am I?
[00:11:41] And it really, this whole week I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about that dynamic, and I'm listening to that person. And I actually stopped being kind of mean and judgmental about it. And I started feeling like, okay, well, what is happening for that person that I perceive to be making so much more and doing so much better than me? What is happening in them if I'm trusting them and Believing them, that they don't see that anymore.
[00:12:06] And I think it's because we're obsessed with whatever is just a little bit out of our reach.
[00:12:12] And so every single one of us, no matter what we're making, we feel like we're not quite in the club that we'd like to be in.
[00:12:18] Just a little bit more, just a little bit higher. And then we actually do make more, we actually do climb a little bit higher. And then we live a little bit better and we spend the money that we have and we feel like we don't quite have enough again. And we're in this vicious cycle and we can start to begin that wealth. We can begin to think that wealth equals worth and that comfort equals peace and that abundance means blessing. And we can believe that control equals security. But every single one of those is a bit of a moving target and goalpost.
[00:12:44] What we thought was wealth, all of a sudden, we don't consider to be wealth anymore. What we thought was control and security isn't control and security anymore. The goalposts have moved and we've moved them.
[00:12:53] And Jesus sees this in us.
[00:12:58] And as a result, our money then narrows our imagination of the world around us.
[00:13:05] Success or failure really comes down to a bottom line in a bank account.
[00:13:10] And eventually we stop seeing this world as like sons and daughters of God, which is what we're called and intended to be. And we can start seeing it as consumers and competitors and accumulators.
[00:13:21] How much can we stack and how quickly can we do it?
[00:13:25] And Jesus is saying, this is so strong, this blindness can be so strong that you can actually live in this world in which the gospel exists, where God has come from heaven, has given up all of those things and has decided to die on the cross for you and rise again and defeat death. And we can live in a world that exists in this gospel light. And we can make a decision through money to close our eyes so that even in a well lit room and space, we simply cannot see its beauty.
[00:13:56] Money can blind us in such a way.
[00:14:01] So where money becomes central, it affects everything.
[00:14:06] We can't let it simply change how we view people and how we spend time and define success.
[00:14:12] It can't change how we treat our neighbors because we are a gospel people doing a gospel work.
[00:14:18] I would hate for us to be materially wealthy and spiritually completely unable to see without any clarity.
[00:14:26] But again, that blindness is subtle.
[00:14:29] And so Jesus lovingly interrupts this illusion. I love that he says, just look at the birds and look at the Flowers. And look how beautiful and majestic and magnificent they are. And not one of them has simply poured themselves into a line of work that they never wanted to be in in order to achieve such clothing and provision.
[00:14:50] It's Jesus offering us the invitation, even as we leave here today to allow nature to become a corrective vision for us to see the world how he is intending us to see it.
[00:15:01] Be reminded that birds don't obsessively hoard and flowers don't anxiously strive, and the Father cares for them.
[00:15:10] So we have to be a people as we lean into this that are willing to have our sight retrained from the way the world is teaching us. And we must become instead what is considered a counterculture in Christianity. We give to live and to think of ourselves and other people in the way that Jesus thinks of us.
[00:15:30] So we have to understand that money can blind us. No matter how much we make or who we are money, we can all be blinded by the need for money or the obsession.
[00:15:39] Money.
[00:15:40] And then the second thing that we learned through this passage is this is how money actually reveals what controls us.
[00:15:46] You can't serve both God and money, Jesus says. And he says this really, really directly, right? It's not like you probably shouldn't, or this is kind of unwise and maybe not the most wisdomful thing. He just hits it right on the nose. And he presents this as a spiritual reality woven into this fabric of our soul. But some of the relief that comes from this is when he says, where your treasure is, that's where your heart is. On one hand, that's really convicting. And, okay, all my treasure maybe is over here. And, gosh, that's where my heart is. That's not where I want my heart to be. But also on the same note, we can pretty easily identify where our heart is if we simply follow the money.
[00:16:25] Now, my wife and I are very different people. I don't know if maybe you're married to someone different or you spend a lot of time or find yourself in a close friendship with somebody that's very different, but we fit that stereotype. Rebecca and I think about everything in this world from pretty different ends of the spectrum.
[00:16:41] Apparently, this is God's way to bring those two people together and then have them work everything out from those perspectives, which is just always a pleasure.
[00:16:54] And it's even, I was clocking this kind of simple thing in that my wife and I walk the kids to school every morning, and there's a crosswalk between and, you know, coulee is Kind of becoming a little bit more of a busy street.
[00:17:07] And I walk my dog regularly around this area, too. And my wife is on one end of the spectrum when it comes to crosswalks in which she watches a car approach, and she is judging this car and staring into their soul.
[00:17:20] Doesn't matter what kind of car. It could be a pickup, could be electric car, could be whatever. She's watching them, and, boy, if they don't stop, they can't hear her.
[00:17:28] That thing zooms by and she goes, oh, great. Great.
[00:17:31] That was awesome. School zone, moron.
[00:17:35] Like, just like.
[00:17:40] And when I. This happened the other day, I was walking my dog, and I got to that exact same crosswalk where it was just me and my dog and a car was coming.
[00:17:49] And, you guys, I hate cars stopping for me. I hate it so much.
[00:17:55] And so I'm pretending to not want to cross, but I get a little too close, and this guy who has this window down stops, and he looks at me and he goes, hey, are you crossing? I go, no.
[00:18:10] Yes, I am.
[00:18:12] I would like to cross.
[00:18:15] My word, what is wrong with me?
[00:18:18] You know, my wife just hates every time she, like, even makes it a point. We walk up to a crosswalk to get, and she just keeps going. You know, I'm like, oh, but the people might have to stop. This is bad.
[00:18:29] You know, you guys, I'm so jealous of those of you who just, like, walk up to crosswalks and you just, like. And you don't even, like, wave at people. When people do stop, I'm like, I'm so sorry.
[00:18:40] I will never do this to you again.
[00:18:44] We're pretty different people, and I bet you could imagine that this translates to how we spend money, too.
[00:18:52] We were so poor when we first got married. We were both kind of in school, and then I was working on top of that, there were a few months where I came home and my wife's just crying at the table, and she would say something like, we don't have any food left, and there's a couple days till payday. And I would say, no, there's peanut butter in here.
[00:19:10] Tortillas, too.
[00:19:12] This is amazing.
[00:19:14] And.
[00:19:16] And even now, it's funny, she will come to me and say something like, hey, we don't have any more money for the rest of the month. We can't spend anything. We gotta eat what's in the house, whatever, you know? And then somehow I'll make sure that we get enough money to go to a baseball game and buy as many hot dogs as we Want, you know, it's like the money's just flying out of my pocket. I found some, I found some peanuts for me, please. And you get in these environments, you know, these specific places, and go, oh my gosh, my heart, heart is soaring in this place. And she'll also come to me and go, hey, we don't have any money for the rest of the month. And then just somehow, like the five Amazon boxes will just show up and with my name on them. Having not purchased anything, you know, what is going on? There's these places, you know, you watch my wife inside of a TJ Maxx, and all of a sudden she's like, no, we got money, we got money.
[00:20:05] I don't know why TJ Maxx, I can't stand that place.
[00:20:14] My kids know it too, right? They take me into Dick's Sporting Goods and they just slowly bring me around all the baseball bats and see what I do.
[00:20:23] It's pretty clear where our heart is at. And really, even more than that, you know, those are all kind of silly things.
[00:20:31] I will very quickly spend money on things that will distract me.
[00:20:35] I like entertainment, I like fleeting kind of experiences. And some of that is fine. And then some of it comes back around to my real need and want from a soul level to like just disconnect from this world as often as possible.
[00:20:52] And that experience often makes me a poor dad, a poor husband, a poor follower of Christ, because I want to be removed so deeply and often. That's where my heart is. And so there's my treasure.
[00:21:06] You'll find me investing in these things.
[00:21:10] But enough about how awful I am.
[00:21:13] Let's talk about how awful you are. You know, where does your money fly off so easily to and so warmly?
[00:21:23] Why do you have to mess so much in your appearance so easily? Why does so much investment have to go all the time and so easily into things like love and romance? Or even those of you who are self righteously judging everybody else in here because you invest and save so well. Why do you insist on not being generous and giving away what you have to other people in order to do kingdom and gospel work and allow your heart to be cultivated in a way that Jesus is calling you to? Why do we do these things so easily and we resist so easily the way that Jesus is offered in front of us? You see, because money and our addiction to it and our love of it can manifest itself in all of these ways.
[00:22:06] We want to invest in our appearance so that we feel like we have control over this thing that Maybe is creating an insecurity in us. And instead of allowing that insecurity to exist somewhere else, we simply think if we can just throw as much money at it as long as possible for the rest of our. Our lives, somehow I can numb the insecurity.
[00:22:24] Sometimes we hoard it and we save it so that we feel like we can be gods in and of ourselves.
[00:22:30] That if we simply have enough of it and we hold on to enough of it, then we are actually in control, and that's our greatest heart's desire.
[00:22:41] And then, you see, with that one unexpected expense, one market shift, one financial insecurity, and suddenly anxiety floods the soul.
[00:22:50] Because these small little things weren't meant to actually sustain us in our lives.
[00:22:56] They're simply just numbing agents for a moment. Scott McKnight says this. He says Jesus doesn't call us to become careless about provision, responsibility, or wisdom. He calls us to become carefree, to live without being internally ruled by fear.
[00:23:13] And Jesus is saying this fear is understood. When you understand where your treasure is, if you can see where your treasure is, you begin the process of overcoming and living a life without fear.
[00:23:26] Which is why Jesus spends so much time about worry. Because anxiety exposes hidden worship.
[00:23:35] What are you anxious about? Probably tells you where you are having secret worship.
[00:23:43] What controls your peace controls your life. And so money is uniquely dangerous because it offers counterfeit versions of what only God can actually provide. The security you're looking for, the identity you're looking for, the peace you're looking for, the significance and the safety. It's all actually found in this invitation that Jesus is offering that stands directly opposed to another upgrade, another fear, another comparison, and another future to secure.
[00:24:11] And the third thing that we find in this passage of Scripture is how we can actually break the power of money over us. So I do appreciate Jesus actually gives us a bit of a blueprint for how to do this.
[00:24:22] There's a lot of teachings that Jesus has that he just kind of ends. And I go, what?
[00:24:28] How do we do that? And even the disciples, he teaches some parables, and the disciples have to, like, pull him aside after he teaches this larger crowd and go, what do you really mean? And Jesus tells us what he really means in here.
[00:24:39] He says, seek first the kingdom of God.
[00:24:43] And so I want to be clear that Jesus is not saying, stop having money or you got to feel guilty about owning things. Jesus is going deeper than just this behavior and how we balance our budgets. He's addressing where we worship because the power of money is ultimately broken not by this deprivation, but instead by reordering or relocating where our treasure is and moving it somewhere else.
[00:25:08] And so when he says seek for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, this is kind of this big turning point. He's telling us that we can't serve two masters. We can't have our allegiances here and allegiances there. Because money is not just a part of this sinful thing, it's actually a God in and of itself. And these two gods cannot compete. We can't serve both of them. And, and so something will sit at the center of our trust. And Jesus is insisting that it's him and his way.
[00:25:33] And so Jesus invites us to move money out of that place and instead place the Father there instead. And practically that actually changes how we live. So we move to generosity instead of hoarding.
[00:25:44] We trust and attempt to trust instead of control.
[00:25:48] We function with gratitude instead of comparison.
[00:25:51] And we engage in simplicity instead of endless accumulation.
[00:25:56] Endless accumulation will be the death of us all.
[00:26:02] Every act and opportunity of open handedness weakens money's grip on our heart.
[00:26:15] And so I want to bring up this idea that we see several times in scripture.
[00:26:20] It's, it's called the tithe.
[00:26:23] And in church circles it's, it's often about, yeah, we're trying to give 10%. A tithe means 10% of our income, our resources.
[00:26:31] And a lot of times that translates to the church. And by the way, I hope you give to the church. I think you should give to the church. I think it's an incredible investment. I think if you've been here for a while and you're participating, I think it's on you and it's part of your responsibility to give to the church. I think you should do that. And I think incredible gospel work has happened, happening here. I think homeless are finding homes. I think kids are finding the gospel. I think families are being repaired and reshaped and healed. I think God is speaking to people and they're giving their lives to Christ. And this is a place worth investing in and you should do so.
[00:27:01] But even more than that, I don't know that Jesus's teaching is translating specifically to, and you got to give 10% to Westside Church. Jesus is saying, you will die in if you don't open your hands in generosity to the world around you. You will suffocate beneath the weight of your own anxiety and pressure and your fingernails will curl and your nakedness inside of a hotel room with people that aren't your friends. You will die in this box of a life that you have created. But generosity and open handedness, a caring for the gospel and the poor, for the people around you who are desperate to need it. And I got to tell you, if 10% of your income, whether it goes to the church or any other kind of form of generosity in your life, if 10% freaks you out, I got news for you. Jesus is not the treasure of your life.
[00:27:50] Probably something else is.
[00:27:55] I'm sorry to be so frank and direct.
[00:28:00] I feel a little bad saying it that way. And I also feel convicted that this is what the text is demanding of us today.
[00:28:09] Because Jesus isn't inviting us to give to the church. He's inviting us to spend life with this open handedness that weakens money's grip on our heart.
[00:28:18] Because God's the provider and not our bank account, not our status and not our ability to control outcomes.
[00:28:24] I love this quote from David Foster Wallace, which I could have just stood up here and read you this quote and then walked off the stage. It's the best thing I have ever heard when it comes to this particular topic of worship and the worship of things. So David Foster Wallace says this says if you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough.
[00:28:49] You'll never feel like you have enough.
[00:28:52] That's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.
[00:28:58] And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. If you worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid and you will need ever more power over others to numb your own fear. Worship your intellect being seen as smart and you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. We cannot serve two masters.
[00:29:22] And so what we have to do is relocate our treasure. Understand that it has to belong somewhere else first. Peter says this says, but you're a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. What that also translates to the word possession, translates to treasure.
[00:29:38] That we have this God, the richest of all possible beings in heaven, having everything that you could possibly imagine, decides to come down to earth, to live poor, to be born in a manger, and to ultimately died in a tomb that didn't belong to him or his family anyway.
[00:29:54] Why would God do such a thing? Clearly his treasure was somewhere other than where he was.
[00:30:01] And so he decided to participate with humanity, to die on the cross for our sin and rise again for our salvation because we are his treasure.
[00:30:12] And then Jesus teaches us that while his treasure was here on earth, that our treasures should be there in heaven where Jesus is, that he should be our treasure.
[00:30:22] And so now our treasure finds itself in heaven where rust and moths cannot destroy.
[00:30:33] And so I want to encourage you today that Jesus is trying to calm our anxieties through this discussion about money and other things.
[00:30:40] He wants us to be reminded that we're not abandoned and not unseen and not carrying light alone. And Jesus isn't naive to our difficult struggle. For those of us who are poor find difficulty paying the bills. For those of us who are rich who find difficulty being generous. None of us are intended to worship this money. We're not meant to treat it irresponsibly or passively. But we're meant to live this life with money, freely and generously.
[00:31:04] And I love what the hymn writer says in this to turn your eyes upon Jesus, turn, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and his grace.
