How Much is Enough? Part 2
August 12th, 2007 | Michael Q. Pink
I have asked my very good friend Eric Beck (former International Director of Training for E-Myth Worldwide) to pass on three key insights that will help you in business. Today is the last installment dealing with the very important question of how much is enough. Now, here’s Eric…
So here’s the punch line: You need a system that lets you discern manna from mammon and brings your business into right action. Manna is provision from God that you did not create and can take no credit for. Mammon, on the other hand, is a controlling spirit which impersonates God - that infests your manna and makes it rot within hours.
See the problem?
However, God gives us the key: how to successfully gather and store manna without the rot. Ahhh! You have to cook it. You must transform it. How many lottery winners, beneficiaries, young inheritors, and even regular business people knowing nothing about this, receive manna from heaven, but within minutes mammon has infested the whole situation and lives literally stink, rot, and fall apart?
So let’s land the plane and get our bags. We are on a spiritual journey in the natural marketplace. We are not called to ‘hide til heaven,’ but rather to be fruitful. We have to gather the right amount of provision (manna) commensurate with the vision God has given us. Then we have to prevent mammon from causing it all to rot in a Wall Street nano-second. Taking back the gates of commerce requires us all to master the manna/mammon distinction! If we don’t, we’ll never make it out of the wilderness.
Based on this biblical pattern, my team and I have developed a tool that will precisely determine what kind and amount of manna your vision really needs in order to leave behind the “wage slavery” of simple addition and fully come into God’s multiplication. God’s provision is literally just waiting for you to gather it and prosper.
Tomorrow we will be announcing the details for a special FREE offer that will help you get control of your business life, so watch for it in your inbox.
Message 1: How Are You Working? (featuring exclusive video of Eric Beck speaking)
Message 2: How Much is Enough?
Digg This Share This
August 13th, 2007 at 8:36 am
Many are going to say what does this have to do with How much is enough? My answer is everything. I do not believe you can answer that question unless your heart is totally dedicated to God. Before asking the question, we need to seek God daily. Many times our enough is a lot more than God’s enough. I hope you enjoy this and my question to you and to me is:
WOULD YOU PRAY THIS PRAYER?
The following prayer was penned by John Piper for Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Read through it and then consider these questions: First when we pray, why don’t we pray like this? Second, what makes us reluctant about praying some of these things even now?
The answer to both questions is this: Because this kind of prayer is serious. It is serious about exalting God, it is serious about the sin we tolerate in our life every day, and it is serious about changing our orientation from worldly pursuits and perspectives to godly pursuits and perspectives. The sad fact of the matter is that too many Christians are not willing to get that “serious” about God – myself included.
O Father God, save us from ourselves, from
our short-sited understanding of who You
are and what you require; and no matter
the cost, change us into living embers
ablaze for Your glory.
O Lord, by the truth of your Word, and the
power of your Spirit and the ministry
of your body, build men and women at
Bethlehem . . .
Who don’t love the world more than God,
who don’t care if they make much money,
who don’t care if they own a house,
who don’t care if they have a new car or
two cars,
who don’t need recent styles,
who don’t care if they get famous,
who don’t miss steak or fancy fare,
who don’t expect that life should be
comfortable and easy,
who don’t feed their minds on TV each
night,
who don’t measure truth with their
finger in the wind,
who don’t get paralyzed by others’
disapproval,
who don’t return evil for evil,
who don’t hold grudges,
who don’t gossip,
who don’t twist the truth,
who don’t brag or boast,
who don’t whine or use body language
to get pity,
who don’t criticize more than praise,
who don’t hang out in cliques,
who don’t eat too much or exercise too
little;
But…
who are ablaze for God,
who are utterly God-besotted,
who are filled with the Holy Spirit,
who strive to know the height and depth
of Christ’s love,
who are crucified to the world and
dead to sin,
who are purified by the Word and
addicted to righteousness,
who are mighty in memorizing and
using the Scriptures,
who keep the Lord’s Day holy and
refreshing,
who are broken by the consciousness of
sin,
who are thrilled by the wonder of free
grace,
who are stunned into humble silence by
the riches of God’s glory,
who are persevering constantly in
prayer,
who are ruthless in self-denial,
who are fearless in public witness to
Christ’s Lordship,
who are able to unmask error and blow
away doctrinal haze,
who are tough in standing for the truth,
who are tender in touching hurting
people,
who are passionate about reaching the
peoples who have no church,
who are pro-life for the sake of babies
and moms and dads and the glory of
God,
who are keepers of all their promises,
including marriage vows,
who are content with what they have
and trusting the promises of God,
who are patient and kind and meek
when life is hard.
Pressing for all there is in Christ,
Pastor John
August 13th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Kern,
Thank you for your post. And yes that is a powerful prayer indeed.
For clarification, the question about how much is enough is a question that cannot be answered without stark clarity about what God has asked all of us specifically to do while we’re here on earth.
The biggest lie I’ve heard in modern christianity is that we are saved to go to heaven. If that is your vision, then you don’t need any training, discipleship, resources at all. You are just “hiding til heaven.” You are a coward and have just taken the path of least resistance.
It is precisely this lie that accounts for the horrors we see on earth today: starvation, inequality, injustice, infanticide, etc. Rather I believe we all DO have a specific mission to accomplish WHILE WE’RE HERE. And yes that means love your neighbor, know God more fully, etc. But those Sunday school generalities must become actionable, measurable, tangible in every area of human endeavor.
And that doing so is going to take resources. And that brings us back to the central question: How much resource is required to fulfill God’s destiny for my life? How much is enough? Money, time, relationships etc. How much? It is mammon who tells us, “there’s never enough.”
I hope this is clear: when you rob someone of their destiny, one terrible result is that they become defenseless against mammon. You see without a destiny to bring Christ to a particular area of endeavor (business, medicine, government, etc.) your de facto mission is simply survival. Oh you won’t call it that I know, but if you look at a life that is governed by the worldview that we are just little rotten sinners who just hope to escape hell and boy it would be nice if things were better but you know only Jesus is perfect and I’ll just watch another episode of American Idol and pretend that I’m not worshiping and take another aspirin and just make it another day and try not to sin. THAT IS NOTHING MORE THAN SURVIVAL.
Once our mission becomes survival, then we are thrust head long into a self oriented worldview - everything becomes self referential - our theology, relationships - everything becomes about SELF. When this happens, mammon comes in and lands a one two punch - one: scarcity. Mammon tells us that there is just not enough…ever. So we better frantically grasp all we can before it’s too late. And two: if we have any hope of surviving we’d better keep our heads down and do what we’re told. He convinces us, just like the wicked spies on the boarder of Canaan, that we are indeed grasshoppers - TOTALLY UNABLE to take the promised land. It would be better, they said, if we just died in Egypt - AS SLAVES!
That single lie, that one strategic move by the enemy has entangled hundreds of millions from the past 2000 years up to this day. But a few are starting to get free. No I don’t mean, get SAVED. “It was for freedom that he set us free.” Salvation is just the first step in our journey. Now what? Have you ever asked that question…saved to DO WHAT?
We were saved to live our lives to God’s glory by being fruitful, not by running scared of the mammon spirit that has so thoroughly infested our marketplace and pulpits.
His game is serious and it’s been in high gear since the second Christ ascended. So the choice is yours (lest you think I’m a strict Calvinist), are you going to look at those high walls, giants, and cower back to Egypt? Or are you going to fulfill your destiny (lest you think I’m a strict Armenian) and get the tools that will make your salvation worth more than fire insurance?
But each person’s work will be shown for what it is. On judgment day it will be brought to light. It will be put through fire. The fire will test how good everyone’s work is. If the building doesn’t burn up, God will give the builder a reward for his work. If the building burns up, the builder will lose everything. The builder will be saved, but only like one escaping through the flames. - The Apostle Paul
August 13th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
Eric,
Thank you for your response. I could not agree with you more. God is serious and we should be also. Many Christians play church. Many Christians just want to keep out of hell and want to live their lives like they want. To many Christians are running scared and are continuing to look back to Egypt. We need to increase our dreams and our passions. We need more risk takers. More that are not afraid to lose everything for His sake.
Our rewards not, our salvation, are going to be given to us depending on what we do here on earth. Two books I would recommend everyone read are by Randy Alcorn, The Law of Rewards and Money, Possessions and Eternity.
How much is enough for you or for anyone else I cannot answer. But we all do have purpose for being here on earth. We all have a course given to us by God and we will be held accountable on how good of a job we kept the course.
The apostle Paul said that he wanted to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Nobody had a more single-minded vision for his life
than Paul did. He could say it in many different ways. He
could say: “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious
to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry
that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of
the grace of God” (Acts 20:24). One thing mattered: “I will
not waste my life! I will finish my course and finish it well. I
will display the Gospel of the grace of God in all I do. I will
run my race to the end.”
Or he could say, “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for
the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of
the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his
sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish,
in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8). One
thing matters: Know Christ, and gain Christ. Everything is rubbish
in comparison to this.
What is the one passion of your life that makes everything else
look like rubbish in comparison? Oh, that God would waken us to a single passion for a single great reality that would unleash us, and set us free from small dreams, and send us, for the glory of Christ, into all the spheres of secular life and to all the peoples of the earth.