Stealing From God

I have thought much on the topic of finances across the past year and a half.  From my wake up call of having found out how my father had built an intricate Ponzi Scheme to shaft credit card companies, to taking Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University program.  This past year has been quite a time of contemplation for me!

Now I always lived my life never really worrying about the future financially - I honestly do trust God to provide.  I remember in particular a six week period in 1975 when I had NO money, nor any hope of raising any money, so food had to come after I could scratch together enough for rent.  Very hard times and yes you can live 45 days on a box of crackers, a small bottle of ketchup and water.  Yeah tough times.  But, since then I have always held my debt to 90 days of income - and whom would have thought my job would vaporize in 11 days?!?!?!?!?

And God still provides, albeit that my debt went from 90 days to pay off to 38 years, in theory!  But, oh well, God's plan - so we will see how I will get out from under this!

To get by and out of debt, I have thought about selling everything I own - only to find frustration.  I seem to be stuck with slowly selling stuff to pay debts and expenses, and God seems to raise up a buyer just in the nick of time every month.  So two ways to look at that one!

On the plus side, God is big enough to figure out what my future needs are and to have arose in me a collecting bug for what would one day be sellable.  Could be.

But, I also hold that everything I have is God's, so then why on earth would I have accumulated so much junk?  Am I a hypocrite here?  If I supported everything God laid on my heart for decades but still spent on stuff I thought was neat - am I a hypocrite?

Have I been stealing from God?

In some way have I been so influenced by culture that I am insensitive to taking from what should have been God's all along?  Even if one were to pay attention to Dave Ramsey's course, you should still be asking this question of yourself.  Is the accumulation of wealth the symptom of stealing from God?

Stocks, Bonds, IRA's, 401K's, etc - are these all symptoms of a lack of faith in God or are we stealing from God?

Something to consider......

This is brought a bit sharper into focus when one of my friends married a guy who advocates giving everything to "god" and living off of the "system".   Actually, he has accumulated quite a little following of like minded people.  Now I might consider the concept of his lifestyle - but the application is actually bordering on sin to my way of thinking.  You are not allowing for God to provide, when you give away what God gives you and then fight tooth and nail with the government for every dime you can.  Think used car salesman mentality here.  No lie is too big, nothing brings satisfaction because you always are fighting to get more - from governmental agencies, friends, family, followers, etc.  Like I said, looks like, smells like, probably is sin.

And somewhere in-between lies where we should be walking.  God gives, you return, and what of the materialism of our culture I am faced with in my own life?