God's Plan For Your WellbeingSýnishorn

Financial wellbeing

I’d like to address a perspective that is vital if we’re to be financially free. It concerns the importance of us getting the right biblical balance on this whole subject. Imagine there’s a highway called ‘God’s Plan for Your Financial Wellbeing’, and on either side are two ditches: ‘Poverty Perspective’ and a ‘Materialistic Mindset’. 

A poverty perspective views life through the lens of scarcity and is often accompanied by a fear of lack. So how do we begin to get free from this? True shalom means ‘wellbeing in every area of life’, including financial and material provision. In Genesis 2, right at the beginning of the Bible, we see the Lord putting the first human beings in the Garden of Eden, providing for their every need. The consistent theme throughout the Old Testament – even after the Fall – is that God provides for His people. This becomes even clearer in the New Testament as we see that God is our heavenly Father, who wants to provide for our basic needs and free us from fear and worry. 

A materialistic mindset is where we become excessively concerned with physical comforts or with the acquisition of wealth and material possessions. The root of this is putting our trust in money or possessions rather than in God. In order to get free from a materialistic mindset, we need to begin by recognising the truth of Jesus’ teaching that ‘life does not consist in an abundance of possessions’ (Luke 12:15), whatever the rest of the world tells us. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus invites us to ‘seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you’ (Matthew 6:33, ESV). Simply, it’s a matter of priorities and focus: seeking first God’s kingdom and the things He values helps free us from materialism and believing the promise of God’s provision addresses any fear of lack.

When we’re in God’s will, seeking first His kingdom, we can enjoy His peace and expect His provision even when economic circumstances look bleak. This is wonderfully demonstrated throughout the story of Elijah, which is set against the backdrop of the three-year drought. God was in no way limited by this situation. First, at the Kerith Ravine, the Lord saw to it that: ‘ravens brought [Elijah] bread and meat in the morning and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook’ (1 Kings 17:6). When the brook dried up, God then sent Elijah to a widow, miraculously supplying both his and her family’s needs. Finally, God provided for his exhausted prophet in the desert by bringing bread and water through an angel. 

Many of us may not experience quite so dire a financial or material situation like Elijah, and we won’t necessarily need ravens or angels to bring us bread, or see our food supernaturally multiplied (though I have heard of this happening). However, we can know God as our provider and trust Him for His provision in every season of our lives.