Jesus Frugalness: Compare It To Yours!

Jesus Frugalness: Compare It To Yours!                   9-13-15      By Capt. Kelly Durant

Matt 10: 9 Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses,10 Nor scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat.11 And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in it is worthy; and there abide till ye go thence.

2. You have heard stories about people who are tight with their money. Q: What does one penny say to the other penny? A: Let's get together and make some cents! The subject of money is always a hot topic! It is necessary for life but the love of it is the root of all evil!

How many of you know that Jesus spoke more about how to be faithful with money than he did on many other subjects? How you manage the physical material world reflects on your spiritual life! Remember Jesus took action against the rich false leaders who exploited their followers!

Those that appreciate and maintain well their scarce few assets display a parallel of how they are appreciating and maintaining their spiritual life walk with God. Out of control spenders create debt, offend others and live tormented! And to the contrary, hoarders or the too frugal are so selfish they don’t provide enough of the basics for their own families or God’s work! They hide money, they pass on, and no one ever gets to use it! Either extreme, be it the selfish savers or the wasteful extravagant ones are unfaithful servants according to God’s Word!

3. Why am I choosing this subject? Because everybody would love to have more money! Have you ever met anybody in life that ever said, I wish I were poorer?! Like it or not, many of us are actually poorer because in the past 5 to 10 years most everyone (worldwide as well) has had to learn how to live austerely on less than before! We need more financial wisdom. If you cannot get more coming in then you need to get educated on how to stop it from going out.

I meet people daily who are disappointed that they (we) are not getting much (if any) money back on the tax returns!  If you are getting anything back, you can praise God for that! Our current system is taxing us to the breaking point so that the feds have taken in record amounts in taxes and fines the last several years. Yet they keep borrowing another trillion dollars on average per year! (investigate this on line for yourself). In 2014 they took in over 3.7 trillion and still they still borrowed another trillion to cover black ops projects and secretive projects. Actually they are putting the entire nation at risk for bankruptcy! And talk about bad book keeping, the Pentagon this year can’t account for a missing $16 trillion! Try telling the IRS you lost just $16,000 and take note how they will for sure get the tax from you owe them!

So if you want to learn about frugalness and living in peace in a balance with money forget getting it from the government! All current governments are corrupt and no example to follow! The Americas, Europe, China, India, basically all the world is in a financial chaos right now!

4. Another point is I suggest you be careful with other people who want to invest your hard earned money into stocks or get rich quick schemes. It was blatantly exposed just a few years ago that the privileged government employees get inside trader information so this means they will always be the ones never losing making profits, contrary to your average Joe who obsesses over the numbers trusting investment companies. Algorithms and investors may tell one where to put your money (everyone wants to spend what’s yours) but here is a verse that the Godly live by… Psalm 119:110 The wicked have laid a snare for me: yet I erred not from thy precepts.

A fool and his money are quickly departed, so beware of these who use their tongues, paperwork, power, and laws unbeknownst by you in order to gain from you what should stay in your own pocket! Jesus knew people would always want to steal from you everything you own!

Mark 3:27 No man can enter into a strong man's house, and spoil his goods, except he will first bind the strong man; and then he will spoil his house. This verse to me implies a person can be bound mentally (not just physically) by a deceiver and this is how another can take over all that one owns. Gamblers, risky business investors, drug sellers and users, alcoholics, and materialistic envious people are all bound mentally by demons and they lose everything eventually! The only way to be authentically strong is to get your strength from Jesus!

5. Do you recall the prodigal son? He was young and dumb and out of control! He obtained lots of money, which was not yet legitimately his but he demanded it from his father anyway. He thought he had lots of friends but all they wanted was to help him spend it on parties and riotous living. He was like the rap star “50 cents” who is only worth $.50 today, and so many others who have lost millions by being surrounded by parasite friends who sucked away all the wealth. Have you ever met the strange shady people that hang around rich people like I have?

Also, it is common knowledge many times some formerly rich and famous people have even had to stay in Salvation Army shelters because they lost it all!   Proverbs 23:5 Wilt thou set thine eyes upon that which is not? for riches certainly make themselves wings; they fly away as an eagle toward heaven.  All will answe to God for wastefulness doing nothing for Him or others!

Up to this point I am talking about how to not let what you work for in life fall into the hands of others unjustly, or from your own stupidity of having an appetite for the things of the world. You and I are going to have to pray for Jesus’ strength and wisdom to retain what rightfully ours knowing that it is the blessings that God wants us to have.    

6.  Proverbs 30:7 Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die: 8 Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: 9 Lest I be full, and deny thee, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain.

Why is the management of money important? Why does a balance matter? It reflects on our testimony and spirituality. We gain to share. 1 Timothy 5:8 But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

A person who works hard and is wise to not waste money but provides for his or her own within their family, and even within their church family, is reflecting maturity. That faithful one can expect more and more to be entrusted to them. Luke 16:10 He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.

7. Now let’s focus back on the verses of today, on the finances of Jesus and his disciples. In Matthew 10: 9-11, does it appear like Jesus or his followers had any money? Obviously not! Imagine if I were to tell you today, I want you this afternoon to get a ride somehow to the next city a few hours away up the road, and I don’t want you to take any money, and I want you to stay wherever some kind person invites you in to stay because you are preaching Jesus. How many of you think you could survive a mission like this? Yes, no, maybe?

What a challenge right? I observed many Christian groups going on faith trips in the 1970s. Those were years of spiritual awakenings and evangelism. My wife and I have even have done many faith trips on the road in Brazil, and believe us; it actually is possible to live by faith in this way Jesus commanded when you are full of conviction and obedience! God does provide if you are obeying His will preaching the gospel to every creature! 1 Corinthians 9:14 “Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.”

It is obvious, from the beginning Jesus did not want followers who were following not for authentic conviction and a passion for God but rather for the benefits, the “loaves and fishes” or some compensation. Serving God is not for the people who want to just do their own thing and hang around and then be fed for doing nothing to advance God’s love with tangible deeds of service to those in need. The principles of God you and I must live by is to gain all things by the “sweat of our brow”; or in this case as commanded by Jesus, to live laboring for the faith with empty pockets, trusting that God will provide your food, bed, and every need.

8. 1 Timothy 6:8 “And having food and raiment let us be therewith content”. In actuality, God provides for His own, all the basic needs of food, clothes, and even shelter, but if you or I have anything left over, we should count that as an extra blessing from God!

Even in the Lord’s prayer, Jesus taught us to pray , Matthew 6:10 “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread.” Jesus never prayed for His followers to expect to become rich, nor did He ever let one of His own be in absolute poverty. The rich He warned rarely made it to heaven! Yet “blessed are the poor” because they listen the gospel.

Psalm 37:25 “I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his seed begging bread.” When Jesus said, Mark 14:7 “For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will ye may do them good: but me ye have not always”, the inference here is that the poor are the people of the world. They are not living in obedience to God’s will reaping consequences, or they are a victim to man’s injustice to his fellow man.

9. Have you ever heard the complaint that God is so wrong to allow the poor to suffer? To ask, why does God allow suffering and poverty is a trick question designed by Satan himself! God provided a world that can produce enough for all, but it is the world controlled by Satan’s people and godless governments that are provoking the extreme suffering by their unjust rule of the misappropriation of resources. 

Extremely poor people will always exist. Here are several possible reasons why:

1) They are exploited by the rich, or an oppressive government, not paid as they should be

2) They are idol worshipping people who practice evil and are cursed by God until they repent 3) They are lazy people not working to provide for their selves or their own

4) They are people reaping the circumstances of the past sins of their forefathers who were involved in greedy murderous activities (war, corruption, resource wastefulness, etc)

The analysis is that poverty is directly provoked by man, either those who sinned in the past, or form those sinning in the present, but either way, God’s children will get their needs supplied. One of our most precious promises in the Word is this, Philippians 4:19 “But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus”. What a comfort that is!

10. So how frugal was Jesus? Matthew 8:20 And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head”. Do you know what this implies? For the fact that we have a bed and a shelter we are living better than what Jesus did!

Jesus is better to us, His children who obey Him, than He even was to Himself! Today we live in a world that has prospered and grown much since the simple days of foot, horse, or camel travel as in Jesus’ day. There is so much food in the U.S. A., the restaurants throw away about half of their food wasting $165 Billion dollar’s worth per year!   http://www.thedailymeal.com/what-do-restaurants-do-leftover-food/52914

Not just The Salvation Army but dozens of thousands of groups provide shelters for the homeless and feed the hungry but the poverty still persists even more. Don’t you think it is time we shifted our expectations and goals in life more away from our own ambitions, cultural ideas, and failed systems and move more towards the way Jesus taught us with compassion?

11. If people would only discover the happiness, love, and joy the salvation of Jesus brings in life then they would no longer conform to trying to be made happy with money and material things! Things never satisfy. I even wrote a poem about this.

THINGS                       by Kelly Durant

THINGS filling up your heart and head

Makes you as them, just as dead

THINGS your every moment occupy

Making you as flat, empty, and dry

How much would you be worth

If you lost everyTHING that you own on this earth?

For THINGS people slave an endless race

For decaying homes, prestige and place

For THINGS people sell their conscience and soul

And feelings die as THINGS turn cold

And how much would you be worth

If you lost everyTHING that you own on this earth?

THINGS cause envy and give you a complex

As addiction to drugs, you die for what's next

THINGS give stress, many victims have died

Why for THINGS be martyred unsatisfied?

And how much would you be worth

If you lost everyTHING that you own on this earth?

12. The joy of obeying Jesus meeting people on life’s road and turning them on to Him is the best joy I have ever experienced in life! Money will not buy happiness, but Jesus gives it freely!

For years we have been informed by the news outlets the concern over our excessive consumerism, the destruction of our earth by factory pollution, the greed and corruption destroying and wasting of our resources, and we are warned that the overpopulation of useless eaters is destroying us, but what can we conclude seeing godless man going down this path of serving the God of money (mammon)? That this system is not going away until all the people convert to Jesus way! And that will only happen when He returns to judge and reign forever!

Only the simplicity of Jesus can save us! He was the example of God of how to live on little and be able to live happy! Get this concept down about life, you and I must focus more on feeding our spirit than on feeding our appetite for things. Dream in God’s heavenly dimension, not for things on earth where “moth and rust corrupts”! Don’t feed the body and starve the soul!

Don’t be guilty as in 1 Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Ask God for a new vision to serve Him! I have tried it and you will live blessed and happier than what you ever imagined! Live as Jesus lived! Earth is passing, heaven is forever!