This is our third and final of the G-WORDS series.

In this blog, I welcome Pastor Jacob Kent. Jacob serves on staff with me at Harvest Christian Center, and it was his responsibility to pray, write, and share about this G-WORD. What follows is his work on this third word of our G-WORDS focus.

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Let’s look at Scripture to make sure we stay grounded in the Word and not just what
our thoughts on it might be.

Ecclesiastes 5:10 says, ”He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves
wealth with his income; this also is vanity” (ESV).

1 Timothy 6:6-10 tells us: “But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs” (ESV).

Lastly, let’s look at Luke 12:15-21. Jesus says, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of
greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God”“ (NIV).

Let’s define it.

GREED is the sin of selfishness.

It’s about a person wanting more than what they have—not just more than what you have but more than you need. Picture a greedy person in your mind. What does it look like? And why did you just picture the Monopoly man?

Ecclesiastes tells us that those who love money will never be satisfied with it. And then, in 1 Timothy, it told us that the love of money is the root of all evil.

1 Timothy 6:10 is one of the most misquoted verses in the Bible. People say money is the root of all evil, but the Bible says the LOVE of money is the root of all evil.

Money is not evil on its own. We need money to live. But the LOVE of money is the root of all kinds of evil. When Christians are more worried about how much money we have in our accounts than about the number of people we talked to about Jesus that week, we have a problem.

Then Luke gives us the information that we all should take as great joy. WE CAN’T TAKE IT WITH US.

But that’s the thing: We look at others and think… they could be greedy, but I can’t be greedy. I’m not greedy; I don’t have a greedy bone in my body, but I might be, and then we qualify it with a word that makes us feel good about it—“AMBITIOUS.”

Let me tell you about a preacher I knew.

Although I haven’t spoken to him in a while, I know his story well. This young man knew he was called to be in ministry, and he had big dreams. In fact, people described him as ambitious about the things he wanted. He wanted to work full-time in the ministry, which isn’t common, especially at a young age. He had plans to be a youth pastor by the time he was 25, and he’d spend quite a few years in that. Then he might write a book, he might travel and preach around the country, he might lead the next great revival in the United States, or he might be the one who goes and becomes a missionary in a foreign world. The young man knew he had a strong testimony of how the Lord saved him, and he was glad to share that with everyone that he came into contact with. He started in the right direction for ministry at 18 years old.

He began preaching in his youth group, and his pastor allowed him to preach pretty often for the church he was attending. After a couple years of doing that, he spent some time searching for a new church and somewhat of a new ministry opportunity because, again, being the ambitious young man that he was, he decided that he was going to go and find a place that wanted him to use his talents, to the best of his ability. So he landed at a couple different churches, and he never stayed long because he was striving for that BIG ministry life he was looking for because he believed wholeheartedly that was what God wanted for him. Again, this young man was AMBITIOUS.

So he ends up at a church, and he begins his official ministry career. But it wasn’t quite everything that he wanted. He still had to work a regular full-time job, 40-50 hours a week, and he would complain to me often about this. He would say things like, “Is this what God wants for me? Does he have bigger and better plans for me? Or is this it? Will I have to always do secular work and ministry?” The young man was experiencing burnout. I tried to explain to him, “You’re okay, just don’t quit, keep going.”

He also went to his pastor to discuss this with him. He trusted his pastor, and his pastor gave him some advice that took his ambition to a whole additional level. He said, “Strive to do the best you can in your regular secular job because full-time ministry should never be your only income.” So, he did exactly that. He went and got a job working for a bank, and started to work his way up the corporate ladder. And the higher on the ladder he got, the higher on the ladder he wanted to go.

And at first, it started with so many good intentions. It started with the intention that, well, if full-time ministry isn’t the answer… then work to make as much money as he could… because then he could support his ministry and his church better. And at first, his ambition was in the right place… but then something changed one day.

He was no longer quite as young. He’d been working at that corporate job for some time, and he was starting to amass quite a large income. But instead of spending that income on the church or putting it in savings, he decided to use it to buy new cars, fancy clothes, new suits, and more technology than he ever needed. He always wanted to have the newest fashion, the newest car, and the best and the biggest phone, and he always wanted to be at the top. Now, he tithed faithfully to the church, but he never gave extra or additional to the church. He gave what was required because he was still on staff at the church, but he would never give more than what was expected.

Before this young preacher knew what was happening, his ambition overcame him. What began as godly ambition had drifted into worldly ambition. And now he ran into the place that many of us run into. He found himself in debt because of dumb decisions. He put himself into situations where he spent more than he made every month because he had credit cards and somehow forgot that you had to pay those off, and then he found himself being so stressed about money and about the THINGS that he wanted in his life.

And it finally came to a head. The young preacher was no longer grounded in the Bible, in what God said he was, but in the money he made.

He found himself in a scenario where he put his entire worth—his entire value—in how much money he made. If he made 60k a year, that’s how much he was worth, or if he got bonuses and he was now marketing 75k a year, THAT’S WHAT HE WAS WORTH.

But this is where we find the real root of what we are talking about. We are talking about greed about selfishness. The word selfishness begins with SELF. Greed is the sin of selfishness to the point where we stop depending on God. We try to depend on ourselves and friends, who are not the answer.

You have been told your entire life that your value is tied to how much money you have. Think about the story in Luke and the man who decides to build more. We see his greed gets him nowhere.

The crux is that things slowly end up controlling us, and we don’t realize it until it’s too late.

Let’s talk about the antidotes.

Praise be to God, He doesn’t want to leave us in our sins… He wants to set us free from this sin. What is the best way for us to get past our greediness? It’s another G-Word, GENEROSITY!

Proverbs 22:9 says, “The generous will themselves be blessed, for they share their food with the
poor” (NIV).

In Mark 12, we read: ”Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in
everything—all she had to live on”” (41-44, NIV).

Holy Spirit, make me more like Jesus! That’s the prayer we need to pray.

One of my favorite songs, More Like Jesus, highlights the lie that selfishness believes. Verse 1 begins, “I’ve been told to / Live my own truth / Do whatever, makes me feel good.”

Doesn’t that sound like the sin of selfishness? Making everything about yourself? Making everything about your own truth. Yes, we can discuss money, and yes, we can discuss what we do with money, but shouldn’t we also realize that we don’t need to live our lives all about ourselves.

God doesn’t want us to be greedy or have that in our hearts. He wants us to be more like Jesus!

But if we look at the perfect example of Jesus, we see a man who didn’t want anything else. He went into different cities, and He didn’t have a place to lay his head. He went places, and God met every need. Yes, He’s Jesus, and we aren’t. I get that. But isn’t our goal to be as much like Him as we can?

Isn’t the real antidote to all of our sins to be more like Jesus. Understand what that song emphasizes, “Holy Spirit, make me more like Jesus.” We can’t do it on our own!

And now, the rest of the story.

That young preacher put his entire worth into how much money he made every year, but what that young man learned was that he needed to get out of that thought process. He quit his job and went back to his very first job, working at a fast-food restaurant. He knew he was not supposed to focus on how much money he made.

That young man went on to find true passion and love for the things he was able to do. He went on to find the woman of his dreams and marry her. In fact, he eventually quit that restaurant job and found himself working full-time at a church, which was the desire of his life.

And all it took was him not allowing himself to be stuck in the sin of selfishness. Friends, how much money you make doesn’t make you. Yes, we want to make enough money to pay our bills and buy some nice things, but that can’t be all we are about. That young preacher is happier and more excited about the future of his life than before at his high-paying job. His life was all about GREED.

Deal or No Deal?

Do you remember the game show with Howie Mandell? He was the host of Deal or No Deal. It has a very simple premise to the show. There are 25 cases, you pick one and you hope that your case has a million dollars in it. But then you have to open all the other cases, and they have amounts as small as 1 cent or 1 dollar, or some of them had big amounts like 500K, 250K, or even I would consider 50K a big value.

But you begin to open the cases, and as you open the cases based off of how much each case you opened, they would then have a “banker” make you an offer for a certain amount of money. And sometimes they would get huge offers like 50-100 K to just walk away, sell their case. And sometimes they would make good deals, and they would sell their case for more than what their case had in it. Honestly, it’s a really fun game show to watch, I recommend that you give it a watch.

But Howie Mandell was being interviewed after the show was over, and the guy interviewing him asked him, what was the most that you ever gave away? He said, “The million, we gave away the million.” He was asked, “Do you think that you gave away more than you should have, or did people play the game poorly?” And Howie paused for a moment, and he said, “We gave away so much less than we should have… people should have walked away with so much money!!”

The interviewer was a little shocked, and he walked, was it because people couldn’t play the game properly? And Howie said, “No, it wasn’t that they could play the game properly.”He said, “People would hold onto their case, and rather than take a deal for 400K, which would be absolutely life-changing money, they would take their case, and it would always have the smaller amount in it.”

And the interviewer asked, “Why would they do that? Why would they not take the deal? Howie said, “It was because they were greedy.”

Let’s make this our prayer.

Don’t you want to be more like Jesus? Let’s pray this out loud. “Holy Spirit, make me more like Jesus.”