I remember growing up in a family that did not have very much in terms of possessions and we kids learned early on that if we were going to get extra things we would have to work for it. Well, my dad made it a point to always provide ways of us making money for our extra that we so desperately desired.
I can remember doing chores around the house and earning an allowance that was about a dollar a week. I was always glad when Friday came because it marked the day that we got our allowance. Dad would give each of us our portion after we went to McDonald’s for our usual cheese burger, fries, and a small drink; that’s all dad was providing if we wanted more we had to get it with our allowance. Needless to say, we were grateful for the meal because we didn’t see the need to purchase anymore food with our money. Our attitude was that it was his job to feed us and our job to buy the stuff we wanted with our money.
We never thought about saving a dime of the money because we knew that we would have another dollar to spend as we pleased next week and we were content to live out our lives from week to week because we had a father who would always make sure we could make a dollar.
Problem is we never considered that one day a dollar would not be enough to sustain our habit nor would it satisfy the changing needs we would incur as we grew older. You see no one really prepared us for the future.
I don’t blame my dad he was just trying to see to it that his kids had it better than he did but in the process of life the value of a dollar and the significance of having a right attitude with money just didn’t get communicated. If you are in that situation today you are in the right place because we are going to spend some time dealing with our understanding or lack of understanding about the importance of money and what it means to really live.
It begins with having the right attitude. In order to better understand this we need to go to the scriptures; in Luke we see that we are immediately challenged in our intellect by what Jesus says to his disciples: Luke 6:19-35 represents the contrast that challenges our conventional thinking. Jesus confronted his disciples to think in different terms than they had ever thought before.
