When it comes to how we handle money, it’s pretty safe to say we could all learn a thing or two from John Wesley. He’s the co-founder of the methodist church and the passionate advocate of radical, Gospel-saturated working, saving, and giving. He famously exhorted his churchmembers to “earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” (You may remember I mentioned this a few months back.) But what does it look like for us to pursue earning all we can, saving all we can, and giving all we can? Let’s start with earning. To earn all we can is to become shrewd as serpents in how we handle our finances and our investments, our purchase decisions, our real estate deals, our businesses. It means taking seriously our desire to turn a profit. That instinct is a good one. We need to be profiteering, and profiteering is not sinful in itself. The desire to make a profit, to earn a living, to work and create value — these are all deeply good things. In fact, the lack of these impulses is a real problem (1 Tim 5:8). On saving, I want to be clear: the Bible praises saving in almost every instance. Saving up money means margin. It means breathing room. It means options. It means the freedom to meet the needs of others, to invest in God-honoring businesses, to leave a nest egg for your grandkids, to store up now for the future needs you or your loved ones may face. It is prudent, responsible, and wise. The only time saving is not praised is when the use behind it violates God’s natural order of the work-money connection, or when the wealth itself becomes the god who is supposed to save us. The foolish man who built bigger barns let his wealth corrupt his natural inclination to work. His wiring shifted from “I need to eat this winter, so I’d better get up and work my field today” to “I’ve got ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” His gaze turned toward self-indulgence and away from productivity and contribution. He walked away from Paul’s ethic in Ephesians 4:28 — to labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. In many ways that cautionary tale exposes how badly we need to fight the modern notion of retirement. The idea goes like this: once you hit 55, 65, even 75, your contributions to society are essentially complete. Now you can enjoy your remaining years on the pickleball court, the beach, or the local library as you fade away into the company of your fellow septua- and octogenarians. The very notion is a disgrace. And it makes complete sense, given the world we’ve built. Our society runs on the self-defined, curated life. We worship at the altar of achievement and success. Our offerings are workaholism and the loss of personal connection. Our sacraments are a full calendar, where the honest answer to “how are you?” is a perpetual “busy.” We measure ourselves by job title and operational capacity, income level and wealth accumulation, business growth and the price tags on our status symbols. It is so pervasive that I’m not sure most of us even see how stark the contrast really is. So we fight — as if we were fighting the very powers of hell — against the current we’re swimming in. Be a salmon. Swim. For your very life. How? By giving. All we can. And then some. Every financial decision has to be weighed and measured carefully: the car, the house, the subscriptions, the bills, the gifts, the personal items. We have real power in our pocketbooks. But it is not our power, and it is not power within our control. It is a mighty magnetism. Its desire is for us, and it wants to consume us. That is why I wrote about “the snake in your bed” a few months back. We have to respect the power of the snake and its ability to overpower us. Satan uses money to ruin people all the time, and he is seldom in a hurry to do it. But that same magnetic power can pull others into the kingdom through courageous acts of generosity. How? Jesus said so in Luke 16:9. And why? Because we have first received. What do you have that you did not first receive (1 Cor 4:7)? Your giving should hinder your lifestyle creep. It should probably even outpace your income a little — enough to keep you dependent on the one from whom all provision comes. So give. Give as if your life depended on it. Perhaps it does, and perhaps that is the whole point. We love because he first loved us. We give because what do we have that we did not first receive? And when He loved, he gave — and we, too, can be like him in our giving. What we received from the Father we hand back with arms wide open, knowing that in our acts of generosity God has hidden gospel dynamite to destroy the strongholds of the enemy. So who has God put in your proximity, and how has he blessed you to be a blessing to them? Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit faithandfinance.substack.com
