In the first entry of this series on personal finance, we looked at Matthew 6:33 and Christ’s promise that if we seek Him first, He would provide for all of our necessities. In Thoughts from the Mount of Blessings, page 99, Ellen White offers some commentary on this very verse that is instructive: Jesus does not release us from the necessit
The parable of the talents found in Matthew 25:14-30 can be distilled down to three very practical lessons: Recognize what talents (gifts and resources) God has entrusted to your stewardship. Be like the servants who increased their talents. Don’t be like the servant who buried his talent. We are usually quick to recognize the spiritual appl
School loans, car payments, mortgages, credit card debt—do any of these sound familiar? Perhaps you’ve had one or more of these in your lifetime and wondered: Is it a sin to be in debt? The Bible says: The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. (Proverbs 22:7 ESV, emphasis added) Ellen Whi
In Luke 14:28-30, Jesus gives an illustration of an individual who wants to build a tower. His simple story is very fitting to personal financial management: For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able t
I find it fascinating that in the story of feeding the 5,000, Jesus—someone who has power to create food out of thin air to feed thousands—asks His disciples to gather up the leftovers. Why did He do that when He clearly didn’t need to? We are told in Adventist Home, page 381 (emphasis added): Christ once gave His disciples a lesson upon economy wh
Have you ever heard statements like these before? “No one should ever earn that much money!” “If only that person were more responsible, they wouldn’t be on welfare.” “We are living in the end times; Jesus is coming soon. We shouldn’t be saving and investing for the future. God will provide!” “It’s sad that so many of our Adventist instituti
Materialism could be defined as “a preoccupation with or tendency to seek after or stress material things rather than intellectual or spiritual things.”[1] We can also define it as “any set of doctrines stressing the primacy of material over spiritual factors in metaphysics, value theory, physiology, epistemology, or historical explanation.”[2] Wit
