In life, it’s easy to get caught up in the wrong thing. Proverbs 1: 17-19 says, Surely, in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird, but they lie wait for their own blood, they lurk secretly for their own lives. So are the ways of everyone who is greedy for gain; it takes away the life of it’s owners. Greed is a trap friend, yet the word tells us that we can set ourselves up for it. What’s worse is that it doesn’t just imprison us but it takes away our life. Pointedly Proverbs tells us that, we are personally at fault when we fall into this trap. The reason why is because it’s rooted in loving our “self” more than God or anyone else.
Greed is the desire to acquire beyond reason. Another words, there’s really no good explanation for it. It can’t be justified. It’s not righteous and definitively it is a symptom of an unsound mind. If that’s really the case, the root goes much deeper than we could imagine because the word tells us that God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7)
Where greed is, the spirit of fear is at work. When we must have something without regard for God’s will, fear gains ground in our life. With everything we gather to ourselves, it’s grasp tightens all the more and it’s hold on us becomes cemented.
What then is the antidote? Luke 12:48 tells us that Everyone to whom much is given, from him much will be required. Contrary to this, greed can in no way give anything. It will simply require, require and require because it has nothing to give. Greed is a poverty spirit. It seeks to deplete us of all true worth. One who is snared in greed, has never truly received anything that has been given them by God. Void of understanding of what is available to them, fear persists that resources will diminish or run out.
What I’m about to say next may surprise you and I am in no way telling you to go bust on God. Please don’t. But do you realize that one word found in the thesaurus that contrasts the word greed is prodigal? Prodigal. Really?
Now the implication would be that the prodigal son (found in Luke 15) didn’t know what he had. That he was operating out of greed. But now, I’m taking a second look. A Jewish man had two sons. And the younger of them said to his father, “Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me. So he divided to them his livelihood. And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living.”
Under the microscope, I see something more here. The “prodigal” son knew something of his Father and what he truly possessed more than we realize. I believe it was at the core of his being that he had something of far more value than “possessions”. Could it be that understanding of the true riches of his inheritance were suppressed by the desire for material goods and that when all was gone, it surfaced? (Vs. 17) “But when he came to himself”… When everything else was out of the way, his identity could finally approach him.
Can you hear the voice of reason (or sound mind)? You are so much more than this. Father God is so much more than this.
In Simplicity 