Combatting Materialism
Lord help me, I am reading the book Radical by David Platt. I am already an over the top person when it comes to radical thinking. I'd go live overseas in some remote area and help orphans if we didn't owe everyone else so much money. Which, is why we are getting out of debt. We don't want to be tied down by the things we owe people so that we can be FREE to go do whatever God calls us to do (not that he can't call you to do things while you have debt, but you are in some way in bondage to it).
*Let me go ahead and be honest and say that I believe that health and wealth gospel, prosperity gospel, name and claim it gospel, etc....those are lies that devil has tried to make people believe and not the truth that our bible teaches. If you believe those, you seriously need to spend some time seeking the Lord and at minimum, read this book and a few others by Randy Alcorn on God and money.*
While reading this book last night, I have come up with a new way to combat materialism in our family and home. Once we are debt free and able to actually purchase things...I want to match any purchase we make, with an equal donation to help the hungry and those living in poverty all over the world. Today, 26,000 people will die from hunger. While we were in church for an hour over 1,000 died. Did you read that? That is unacceptable. As David Platt puts it, we sit in a million dollar church, with millions of dollars of cars in the parking lot, and we go home to our millions of dollars worth of houses, and while we do all this, 1,000 people just died because they didn't have anything to eat. Let that resonate with you a minute.
Something small that we can do, is match our own purchases, aside from our giving already and the children we sponsor through Compassion (www.compassion.com). When we want furniture for example, we will save up somewhere between 1 to 2,000 dollars for living room furniture. What better way to combat materialism in our home but to use the next equal amount of money to help people who weren't born in a country like ours and can't afford to eat? I guarantee, this will change the way we think about purchases! What if we all did something like this...
What will you do to combat materialism in your home?
*Let me go ahead and be honest and say that I believe that health and wealth gospel, prosperity gospel, name and claim it gospel, etc....those are lies that devil has tried to make people believe and not the truth that our bible teaches. If you believe those, you seriously need to spend some time seeking the Lord and at minimum, read this book and a few others by Randy Alcorn on God and money.*
While reading this book last night, I have come up with a new way to combat materialism in our family and home. Once we are debt free and able to actually purchase things...I want to match any purchase we make, with an equal donation to help the hungry and those living in poverty all over the world. Today, 26,000 people will die from hunger. While we were in church for an hour over 1,000 died. Did you read that? That is unacceptable. As David Platt puts it, we sit in a million dollar church, with millions of dollars of cars in the parking lot, and we go home to our millions of dollars worth of houses, and while we do all this, 1,000 people just died because they didn't have anything to eat. Let that resonate with you a minute.
Something small that we can do, is match our own purchases, aside from our giving already and the children we sponsor through Compassion (www.compassion.com). When we want furniture for example, we will save up somewhere between 1 to 2,000 dollars for living room furniture. What better way to combat materialism in our home but to use the next equal amount of money to help people who weren't born in a country like ours and can't afford to eat? I guarantee, this will change the way we think about purchases! What if we all did something like this...
What will you do to combat materialism in your home?
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