Atop a Rotating World — E.A. Johnston

Wealth Can Disappear Suddenly

I've seen a lot of folks, through the years, have money, and lose it. I've seen businessmen, who saw their dreams come true financially, only to watch it disappear suddenly into nothing. This happened to many back in the crash and recession of 2008.

Men lost their business, and never ever recovered again. Maybe it happened to you, friend. I know it sure happened to me. I knew what it was like to stand on top of the world and have it all. I often made more money in a single morning than many made all year.

Generosity Amid Prosperity

I was living high on the hog, and I was giving to God in a large way. The more I made, the more I gave. Every month, I tithed not on what was in my paycheck net after taxes, but I tithed 10 of my income before taxes.

I not only tithed 10%, I often gave 15 or 20%. On top of all that giving, I made love offerings to ministries and individuals who needed support. My wife and I bought automobiles for families that needed them.

We covered the cost for people to go on short-term mission trips. We lived large, but we gave God back large. Looking back at those years, I only have two regrets. I should have spent less on me and my family, and I should have given God even more.

Because a day came when my world came crashing down, and I lost it all. I mean, I lost it all. I was standing atop a rotating world, and sooner or later, it turned just enough to toss me off, and that could happen to you as well, friend.

God's Ownership and Human Stewardship

Through it all, I learned a valuable lesson of God's ownership and man's stewardship. This business of saying that one-tenth is the Lord's and the rest is yours is not the reality from God's perspective.

There isn't a dollar you've ever had that wasn't God's, and you don't go fool yourself, friend, for one skinny minute and claim ownership on the other 90%. It all belongs to God. It's God's money and God's resources that should be employed for the advancement of God's kingdom and the spread of the gospel.

Giving an Account for Every Resource

And a day will come when you will have to answer for the other 90 that you mistook for your own. Every bit of it belongs to God, and you have to give an account of every bit of it, every dime of it, how you spent it or how you wasted it and why.

If you're saved individual, friend, God has made you a steward, his steward, and he's entrusted his resources in your hands. If your stock portfolio is growing by leaps and bounds and making you richer and richer, God will make you give him an account of how you managed it for him.

Did your self-preservation turn into greed for a grabbing and getting of more of this world for your own self-satisfaction? Or did you give God a bigger percentage while he was blessing you? Or did you just hoard it for yourself and your family?

Did ministries suffer want because you failed to support them? Did foreign missionaries suffer want on the field because you neglected them? Did Bible translation fail to come to fruition because you refused to dip in your bulging bank account and give to it so others could have a Bible in their native tongue?

The Financial Fragility of Earthly Wealth

Whether you realize it or not, friend, you are standing atop a rotating world and your finances could vanish like a vapor in the wind by a sudden stock market crash. And then the day will come when you wish you gave God more, but now you can't because you no longer have it.

Most folks don't have a clue how risky the financial markets really are and how unstable they can quickly become, that they could lose 50 or 80 percent of their money very suddenly in what securities they own.

It could just all vanish. We are long overdue for a market meltdown and your net worth may just be a rug under your feet that will be soon pulled out from under you. There are still 1 ,200 foreign languages that still need Bible translation and there's more than enough money in Christian hands right now to eliminate that need.

But the tribesman in Africa waits for the word of God in his native tongue because you get your self-worth from looking at your investment portfolio. But you stand atop a rotating world and it will rotate you off sooner than you realize.

Proverbs on Generosity and Withholding

Proverbs 11, 24 states, there is that scattereth and yet increaseth. And there is that withholdeth more than is meet, but attendeth to poverty.