My wife can attest that I love a bargain as much as the next guy. And certainly an opportunity to take advantage of seasonal savings, in order to be a good steward of the resources the Lord has entrusted to us, is always appealing. But below are a few words of wisdom from some of the spiritual heavyweights of yesteryear, as we head into another Black Friday and the onset of the holiday shopping season.
Hudson Taylor on Opportunity over Accumulation
“I believe we are all in danger of accumulating. It may be from thoughtlessness or from pressure of occupation. Retaining things that would be useful to others, while not needed by ourselves, entails loss of blessing. If all resources of the church of God were utilized well, how much more might be accomplished! How many poor might be fed and naked clothed? And to how many of those, as yet unreached, the gospel might be carried?”
Andrew Murray on the True Value of Money
“What a wonderful religion Christianity is. It takes money, the very embodiment of the power of sense of this world, with its self-interest, its covetousness, and its pride, and it changes it into an instrument for God’s service and glory.”
Charles Ryrie on Consumption versus Compassion
“There is a generation of professing Christians now-a-days, who seem to know nothing of caring for their neighbours, and are wholly swallowed up in the concerns of number one,—that is, their own and their family’s. They eat, and drink, and sleep, and dress, and work, and get money, and spend money, year after year; and whether others are happy or miserable, well or ill, converted or unconverted, travelling toward heaven or toward hell, appear to be questions about which they are supremely indifferent. Can this be right? Can it be reconciled with the religion of Him who spoke the parable of the good Samaritan, and bade us ‘go and do likewise?’ (Luke x. 37.) I doubt it altogether.”
George Muller on Seizing Present Possibilities
“It is a point of great importance in the divine life, not to be anxiously reckoning about the morrow, nor dealing out sparingly, on account of possible future wants, which never may come; but to consider, that only the present moment to serve the Lord is ours, and that the morrow may never come to us.”
