God's Competition for Our Hearts

The fourth part of Craig Groeschel's series on being a Christian Atheist concentrates on when we believe in God but trust more in money.  For most of us, the number one competitor for our hearts is money.  People tend to trust money to provide happiness and security in their lives, but this is not where we should search for happiness or security. 

As we fall deeper in love with God and look toward him for our security and happiness we become content and generous with out time and money.  One of the major problems with Christian Atheists is that they love and serve money and use God, we should be doing exactly the opposite.  When we truly get to know God, we will love and worship him and use money to serve him.  The more that we love, worship and serve God, the lesson money will have grip on our hearts. 

Pastor Craig used the term "functional savior" as a way to name anything (or anyone) that we put ahead of Christ.  For lots of people this may be possessions, money, time, etc.  We must always put God first and not allow money or our possessions to become more important to us then God or our family.

One of my favorite scriptures from this session was 1 Timothy 6:17-19.  It says

Tell those rich in this world’s wealth to quit being so full of themselves and so obsessed with money, which is here today and gone tomorrow. Tell them to go after God, who piles on all the riches we could ever manage—to do good, to be rich in helping others, to be extravagantly generous. If they do that, they’ll build a treasury that will last, gaining life that is truly life. (The Message)

Our family has found some of our greatest joy has came at times in which we can do good, help others and be extravagantly generous.  We look forward to getting all of our finances in order by cleaning up messes from the past (debt) so we can have even more occasions to be generous to others in need around us.