Introduction
Humans are always in pursuit of MONEY. They have the responsibility of taking care of themselves and their families. To do this, they need money. Lots of it. They need to build a future. They need lots of money. Driven by these valid needs, HUMANS pursue money wholeheartedly.
The successes and impacts of men in most cases are SOMETIMES measured by how much money they gathered. Hence, we see things like “WORLDS RICH LIST.” The higher the person on the list, the more respected.
Hating money
The pursuit of more money to take care of responsibility, though noble, can lead to a lot of pitfalls. The Scripture says that the Love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. When the Love of money sets in, money becomes an idol, and evil becomes the norm. The Love of money brings the desire to do anything good or evil to gather money. The amount of money becomes the measuring standard of capacity, ability, and success. In a bid to correct the anomaly of the Love of Money, the Christian church shifted towards anti-money. The word LOVE was removed, and Christians replaced it with “Money is the Root of all evil.”
Thus, money became an enemy.
Scriptural warnings about the rich of this world were interpreted to mean that riches are evil. In this era, poverty became equated to righteousness. For many generations, the message saw money to be evil and its pursuit to be an alternative to Godliness.
The church became equated with poverty; thus, the poorest people were equated with being poor as “Church rats.” Talking about money in Church was evil. This led to a conflict for the man who aspired to be rich. The thing that was too evil to talk about was also the same thing too necessary to live without. They were left to make a difficult choice- either pursue money and be classified as unspiritual by fellow brethren or reject money, abandon his aspirations, and remain poor or average and live under the oppression of the unsaved rich of this world just to suit his brethren/ church doctrines? The result of this confusion was that many of the rich stayed outside the church even to this day.
The love of money.
Then came an era where people in the church began to have glimpses of the need for financial riches. They recognized the gaps in the poverty message. Hence, in a bid to fix this, many swung towards the other extreme. The prosperity gospel era set in.
The pursuit of money became the central theme of life, church, spirituality, etc. The warning against the love of money became evident. This, too, created severe excesses we see to date.
What is the balance in the plan of God?
The question is, what is God’s view about all of this? The answer lies in understanding and embracing the concept of TRUE WEALTH. How do we establish a bible-based position?
Before we discuss WEALTH, let’s establish a few points of truth
- The Bible puts God first and above EVERYTHING else. There should be no contest about this at all. Nothing is valid enough to replace God. Not even money, loved or unloved. We should neither love money so much as to replace God’s word because of it, nor hate money so much as to replace God’s word because of it. God’s words must be above all
- God embraces both the rich and the poor and does not love either group above the other. He loves all men.
- God created all the wealth we see, hear, touch, or experience today. All the Gold, silver, paper, etc., were part of his creation or adapted from his creation. God owns all things. He says the “silver, the gold, the cattle on a thousand hills are all his.” He is a wealth creator who promises to teach his people to create wealth
- Learning about wealth is not sinful. Talking about money is not evil. Study the book of Proverbs. There are hundreds of strategic financial and wealth creation advice. A study of the parables of Jesus. Over 70% of them made references to financial principles, which he primarily applied to eternal values, but also applied to financial strategy. (God touches many things at the same time)
What then is TRUE WEALTH?
Whenever mention is made of the word “wealth” most people think about money or other physical and financial assets. And truly, money is a subset of wealth. It represents physical wealth. Physical and financial assets are also forms of wealth. However, TRUE WEALTH is more. It encompasses money and many other components. It is holistic wealth. This is wealth that encompasses the physical, the soul, and the spirit.
Seven pillars make up True Wealth. These are:
- The Spiritual pillar: This refers to the God factor. The person’s relationship with God. This supersedes every other form of wealth.
- The Character pillar.
- The Intellectual pillar (Skills, innovation, experience, exposure, knowledge)
- The Physical Resources pillar: All forms of physical and financial assets.
- The human capital Resources pillar (People, relationships, networks, alliances, friendships, associations)
- The human empowerment (I was sick, you visited me……): Physical and eternal value built through empowering others to make them become like us and even better.
- Health and Wellbeing.
In today’s world, physical and financial resources tend to be the most celebrated form of riches, but it has been historically proven that the other six pillars of resources are needed to create and sustain physical and financial resources. A person who is well developed in the other forms of resources will most likely grow in physical and financial resources.
Thus, a person may be very rich in physical and financial assets, but is not truly wealthy if they score poorly on other pillars. Therefore, a person who may be considered truly wealthy, is one who has gathered a significant measure of all the seven pillars of resources.
We believe that God is the embodiement of True Wealth. This is the type of wealth God owns and that makes God is the WEALTHIEST OF ALL BEINGS, while Jesus was the WEALTHIEST man who ever lived. He may not have been the richest in financial terms, but He commanded a combination of all pillars of resources, deploying them as at when necessary to further his mission and bless the world. His wealth was not just temporal but eternal.
At GrowMyHome, we desire is to see our members grow on all aspets of True Wealth. We encourage you not just to pursue the building of financial wealth, but all the seven pillars of wealth.
