Stewardship is discipleship

Several years ago I was having coffee with a new friend named Chris when he said something I'll never forget. He said, “The greatest obstacle between people and Jesus in our culture is money.”

"I think I agree with you," I responded, "but unpack that for me. Why do you believe that?”

“That’s easy,” Chris said. “In the parable of the soils, Jesus clearly tells us three things that choke out the word of God from producing thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold fruit in our lives and two and a half of them are financial."

In Mark 4:19, Jesus said: "The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful."

Chris continued. “Take the cares of the world. What do people care about? Money. Everyone cares about money. So we’ll count that one. Deceitfulness of riches. Check. And the desires for other things. We'll count that as a half. So at least two and a half of the three kinds of thorns that choke out God’s word from bearing fruit in our lives are financial.”

I was stunned. I had never seen the parable of the soils that way.

The more I reflected on it the more I found myself amazed that the word of God can be choked out at all. After all, this is the most powerful force in the world. By it God created the world. Yet here, in the parable of the soils, Jesus told us God’s word can be choked out by our relationship with money.

Conversations about money and generosity are not just for a few people who have more money than they know what to do with. We all want to live fruitful lives and we're all in danger of being choked out. When we look around at our culture, we seem to be third soil people. So many have heard God's word, but we’re not producing much fruit. We need something different.

“What I tell pastors,” Chris went on to say, “is that if the Jones’ are sitting in church week after week, but their lives don’t look any different, then you’re probably not talking about money enough.”

Somehow, money and giving still seem taboo in our culture. We'll talk about almost everything else except how we spend and give money. But if we want fruitful lives, we need open conversations about our relationship with money. We need godly friends and a community to help us stand strong amidst powerful thorns that seem to always grow back, no matter how many times we've cut them back.

So I told Chris, “Okay, I agree with you, but I’d like to add a statement to your sentence. Not only is money the greatest obstacle between people and Jesus in our culture, it’s also the greatest opportunity.”

If we can get this one thing, we go from being third soil people to fourth soil people! Our lives can explode with thirty, sixty, and a hundredfold fruitfulness. I want that for myself and for everyone I know. Let’s keep talking about our relationship with money and diving deep into what God's word says.

More on stewardship, generosity and the Bible

We have an array of blogs that focus on biblical stewardship and charitable giving, as well as a range of resources to help you think more clearly about money.

This article originally appeared in the Gospel Patrons Newsletter. You can sign up to receive this weekly update.