First, money is your stored work energy. When you are paid for work you have done, you have power to go trade your currency for something of value, like lunch! When you have good financial habits, you learn that spending everything you earn can leave you without money you may need when the unexpected arises. Wealth is a personal matter of scale and can start as small as “lunch money for tomorrow”, because you don’t need it to survive today.
Second, If you choose not to spend all that you earn, you end up with a surplus, or extra money that you didn’t need to spend providing your living, or survival: a safe warm home, food in the fridge, and clean clear water to drink. When you have extra, or an abundance, this is wealth or “more than you need”. Having more than you need simply improves your quality of life which you might come to enjoy and want. Needs and wants; while each list is important, they are not the same.
…the Word is loaded with reminders to remember the orphans, widows, the oppressed, and those that are strangers in your land; they are “less fortunate” and also “at risk”.
[My Thoughts on Wealth]
Third, your wealth can change your world. Money you didn’t need to spend on survival or want to spend on your lifestyle is wealth, or an abundance. While some people in our current culture criticize those who accumulate wealth, your wealth can enable you to help people who cannot help themselves. If you hold to Christian principles, the Word is loaded with reminders to remember the orphans, widows, the oppressed, and those that are strangers in your land; they are “less fortunate” and also “at risk”.
The goals and projects that you choose to power with your own wealth are unique to you and those choices help to shape the person that you are! Your stored work energy, your wealth, enables you to impact the world around you. Don’t underestimate your ability to impact your world with your wealth; your abundance!
As I discuss at length in my MoneySmart Guide to Wealth Course, the more successful your business activity, the more people you’ll serve, the more help you’ll need, the more employees you’ll offer jobs, the more services in your community you’ll require, the more employees paychecks and lifestyles you’ll help to support. Not to mention the intelligent people who will find you and ask, “How did you do that; and will you teach me?”
Keeping with scriptural reference, remember the woman who gave into the free will offering at the Temple in Jesus’ day; she put in two mites [pennies] which was “all the living that she had”. Jesus commented that she gave “more than they all”. [Luke 21:1-4] When you’re wealthy it is easy to benefit others and therefore of less value to you spiritually than giving generously when it may be more difficult for you to do so. God may therefore bless you more greatly and channel more blessing to you if you give when it is more difficult than when it is easy.
Once you have a wealth of money, you’ll likely also have an abundance of time and significant skills. Who will you choose to help or teach when your daily needs for survival are not your primary concern?
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