Businesses are collapsing, marriages are failing, friends are falling apart, people are losing their jobs, so many are struggling under the yoke of indebtedness, some are so broke in spite of their monthly earnings and many are dying prematurely because there is a general lack of self-auditing to generate a lifestyle report that will define and inform the necessary changes that must be made in our way of life.
Lifestyle auditing is as important as a routine medical examination. As a matter of fact, a routine medical examination is a subset of lifestyle auditing. We, however, pay very little to no attention at all to the former and that has slowed our progress and worsened our woes. As Plato said, “The unexamined life is not worth living!”
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5).
Many years ago, my mother worked hard to put a roof over our heads. As a widow, she struggled to build a house, where we grew up. It was a fully-paid-for house, and at the time, it was valuable. I am forever grateful for this.
Today, we have moved my mother from that house, and have had to build her a modern house at a whole different location, with modern amenities. She prefers the new house to that old one she built herself—and that old house even if sold, wouldn’t fetch enough money to do anything meaningful.
The above is being repeated by our generation. We are investing heavily and sweating to build houses or businesses which wouldn’t stand against the future. While it’s true that houses or lands appreciate, it’s false to think all do, equally or at the same speed.
What really appreciates is the strategic location of the land and how well the building on it is built. Therefore, while it may seem prudent in the short term to just buy a piece of land anywhere, and erect any brick and mortar on it, you wouldn’t be leaving any asset to your future self or offspring—as this sort of investment wouldn’t stand against the future.
One of the lies about wealth creation which some pastors have been peddling in recent times is about them having supernatural power to make substantial amounts of money miraculously appear in people’s purses, pockets or bank accounts. As all false teachers do, proponents of this falsehood also allude to a text of the Christian Scriptures which they misinterpret to justify this deceptive scheme.
Whether this falsehood is being propagated through a sermon or the several books that have been published in this regard, Matthew 17:27 is an anchor text which is quoted: “But so that we may not cause offence, go to the lake and throw out your line. Take the first fish you catch; open its mouth and you will find a four drachma coin. Take it and give it to them for my tax and yours” (Matthew 17:27).
It is very difficult for me to understand how a coin which is found in the mouth of a fish becomes a precedent for promising gullible believers wealth transfer which they are enticed to attract by sowing financial seeds in cash, into the lives and Ministries of this so-called miracle money producers. Did Jesus enrich Peter’s life by the coin that he took out of the mouth of the fish?
