Financial Advisor: Christians Are Managers, Not Owners of God's Resources
by Allie Martin
March 4, 2004
(AgapePress) - A financial coach says Christians need to have a better understanding of biblical principles when it comes to money management. Unfortunately, he says, too many believers have been lured into the trap of materialism.In his workbook Five Steps to Financial Freedom: Money Management Made Easy, author James Wise offers a systematic approach to planning for the future and handling the resources that God provides. He says most Christians do not have a firm understanding of stewardship -- or the fact that "God claims ownership over all things."
"The thing that was most transforming for me personally was [when I started] to understand that everything that has ever run through my hands belongs to God," Wise says. "And once I take that perspective -- that God is the owner -- then I look a little further into God's Word and ask 'What is my responsibility?'"
Wise, managing director of Ronald Blue & Co., a financial, estate, tax, and investment firm, answers that question: "God assigns to us the responsibility of stewards or managers over what He has entrusted to us," he says. But the financial advisor says many Christians are unable to grasp that concept and, instead, harbor common, but often unrecognized symptoms of materialism.
"I've seen this in the Church in the form of compulsive saving," he says. "For example, I've seen a lot of cases where a Christian may become very obsessive about saving for some future event, and [sometimes takes that] to the extreme where there's not enough money left to buy clothes for the kids."
He confesses to seeing that attitude taken to such an extreme that, in a number of instances, there was such an obsession with accumulation "that some of the other things that God calls us to do with His money are completely ignored."
Wise says in the 1980s, he bought into the myth that to be happy, one had to have a big house, new cars, and a six-figure income. But he says his priorities changed after he committed his life to Christ.
