Why You Should Earn All You Can

I don’t think many of us choose to make money our master, but when I take an honest look at past decisions I’ve made around work and earning a living, far too often my decisions have been based solely on the financial implications.

Should I accept this job offer? I should have prayed to find my answer; instead, I often just considered whether the new job paid more than my current one. That certainly sounds like money (rather than God) was the master, doesn’t it?

As you know, our society has become obsessed with chasing money. The world tells us to hustle and grind and do whatever it takes to get more money. And somewhere along the line, we bought into the lie that money is the goal when what God intended all along was that it would simply be a tool to help us fulfill our purposes on earth.

Author Craig Hill explains that when “money is [the people’s] servant . . . they do what they do to fulfill a calling given to them by God. Since God is the master, money becomes their servant, to fulfill God’s purpose and calling on their lives.”

Chasing money just to fulfill our own self-focused desires is a recipe for trouble. Instead, the mandate should be to maximize earnings for God’s purposes. For whatever He wants us to do with the increase.

When we understand that God has gifted us with the ability to earn (while positively impacting those we serve) and that those earnings can be used to advance His Kingdom, it creates a compelling case to work hard to increase our earning power.

John Wesley said it best:

In the hands of [God’s] children, [money] is food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, raiment for the naked: it gives to the traveler and the stranger where to lay his head. By it, we may supply the place of a husband to the widow, and of a father to the fatherless. We may be a defense for the oppressed, a means of health to the sick, of ease to them that are in pain; it may be as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame; yea, a lifter up from the gates of death!