YOU CAN'T GO BROKE MAKING MONEY

"The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty." 

Proverbs 21: 5 

Several years ago, I had the pleasure to meet Melvin Graham, the brother of Billy Graham. We became friends and I had the privilege to spend some time with Melvin chasing land deals or taking him to one of his speaking engagements. Melvin had started buying land back in the 1950's and over these past several years had bought and sold a lot of land. I would kid him at times that there was not a piece of land in three surrounding counties that he had not owned, or at least looked at. 

Melvin was known for his humor and wise sayings. One of his favorite sayings was - "trade and travel." He would tell me, and others, " you can't go broke making money."  That was his philosophy, as long as you were selling it for more than you paid, let it go. But Melvin's main philosophy was that he never owned it to begin with. All he had came from God and was owned by God. He just had it for use for a short period, and in that time, he realized that how he maximized it's profits was a representation of the Kingdom of God.

Maximizing profits is an indication of our wisdom,  talents, experience, diligence and many other traits, all of which are a gift from God.  Our responsibility is to do the best we can with the work God has given us. We are representing the Kingdom of God and profits are just as necessary in doing that as giving, meeting needs, quality, integrity and service. But it also has no greater importance than any other responsibility. The question is - do we give the other responsibilities the same time and effort as we do profit? 

In Luke 16; 8, Jesus tells the parable of the shrewd manager. In this parable Jesus uses the illustration of the master commending the manager because of his shrewdness in dealing with his possessions. Then Jesus criticizes those who profess Him as not being as diligent with the things of God as this manager was of worldly things. There are two lessons here. One is that we are to manage our worldly possessions in a way that maximizes its potential for profit. The other lesson is that we should look to the things of God with the same intensity. 

Again in Matthew 25, Jesus tells another parable where He praises the servants who had maximized profits on the talents given them and condemns the servant who did nothing with the talent given him. Jesus' final comment on the "worthless servant"  was to banish him " where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." So what should our attitude be concerning the worldly things God has placed in our possession? According to what we read in these passages, we had better do all we can to maximize the return on the the things God has placed in our possession.

God set the example of success in that everything He did maximized results.We too should strive to maximize the results on all we do. Our temptation is to make it the number one goal in our life and business. We go to work to earn enough money to buy the nicest car and have the biggest house. The nicer the car and the bigger the house the more we feel successful. There is nothing wrong with nice and big things, as long as, it is a gift from God and we do not hold it as our possession. Howard Hendrix once stated; "the man who has the greatest influence and leadership is the man who never takes advantage of all the world offers him."

Jesus has told us that we cannot serve two masters. "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." Matthew 6:24. Our trouble is that we believe this for everyone else, but we are able to handle it. Jesus uses two approaches to this idea. The first is the use of the words serve and devoted in something we love. To serve is to place our total devotion to a particular thing. In this case it is money. The other approach He takes is to place us in the position where our hearts hate and despise the things that which we should love. Our position should always be to place God before all else. That will include profits.