Daily Bread, Not Lifetime Bread

The two worst financial decisions I ever made were both made for the same reason. Neither one was a math error. I could do the math the whole time.

Before seminary, my wife and I bought a house we knew we would most likely leave in a few years. Our apartment was small, there was noise on the other side of the wall, and we wanted to be comfortable. Then the housing market collapsed right at the moment we needed to sell. We made nothing on that house, and it cost me more than money. I spent my Saturdays maintaining it, and that was time I could have spent with my wife, given to my church, or spent getting ready for the thing I was about to do.

Shortly before we sold the house, we traded a reliable old Toyota Corolla for a car that was nicer and, I’ll be honest with you, more exciting. I bought it at auction. But I ended up putting more money into it than I paid for it, fix after fix after fix through my first years of seminary, which was exactly when we had the least to spare.

In both cases, comfort and excitement were doing the deciding. It isn’t a stupid reason. It is a very human one, and I would guess most of you have made a decision from the same place sometime this year. But earthly comfort should not be our primary motive in making decisions, and I had made it the main driver.

Last time I said that nothing you manage ultimately belongs to you. This episode takes one of the things entrusted to you and works through it: your means.

Your means are more than your money

Your means include your money, and they also include your property: your land, your house, your vehicles, your investments, any business you own, and whatever equity you hold. If you carry debt, that belongs here too, because debt is a claim somebody else already has on the things in your charge. A means is by definition a means toward something. The word has the answer built into it.

There are two ways to get this wrong

The first is to treat money as a scorecard, as though net worth were a proxy for your own worth and for whether you have been faithful. Moses warned Israel against saying in their hearts, “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:17). The scorecard does more than flatter a man. It makes a claim of ownership.

The second is mine. I am a worrier by temperament, and my temptation with money is to control it. Savings and stability are part of the job. You have real needs and real expenses, and you need to cover them. But I know the difference in my own heart between covering a need and building a wall, and I think you do too.

I would rather have lifetime bread

The Lord’s Prayer asks, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). According to my sinfulness, I would prefer lifetime bread. I would like the Lord to hand me everything he intends to give me, all of it at once, where I can count it and ration it and spend it at the time I choose. Then I would not have to trust anybody for next month.

That is foolishness, and it is not how the Lord has ever dealt with his people. When some of Israel kept manna overnight against his word, “it bred worms and stank” (Exod. 16:20). What displeased him was hoarding out of a lack of faith. The double portion they gathered at his word for the Sabbath kept just fine. Jesus told of a man who tore down his barns to build bigger ones, and he is the only man in the parables who gets called a fool to his face (Luke 12:20). When I ask for lifetime bread, I am asking to stop needing to ask.

The Lord will not give me that. His mercies are new every morning (Lam. 3:22–23), and he wants me to come to him each morning and ask for what I need in order to do the work he has for me that day. He gives daily bread. He does not give lifetime bread.

Money is a means toward other ends

Money should be invested, it should be given, and it should be used as a tool that makes other things possible. In Luke 16, Jesus treats it as the small thing that tests whether we can be trusted with the true riches.

So what does increase look like? Scripture does teach that the one who is faithful in little is given more, and it’s not unreasonable to think that if we handle something well, the Lord may put more of it into our hands. But that promise does not work like a formula. Being faithful with $100,000 does not mean the Lord owes you $200,000. Increase in your means is measured by what they accomplished:

• What did this enable?
• What became possible that would not have been possible otherwise?
• How many people were employed, fed, cared for, or taught because of it?
• What expenses got covered that somebody could not have covered alone?

And the question that governs all the others is whether it was done for the glory of God.

Enjoyment and giving have their place

None of this makes enjoyment a failure of stewardship. God “richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17), and a pleasant car is a perfectly good thing to have. My trouble with that car was that value and return were not part of the equation. So enjoy what the Lord gives you, and keep mere earthly enjoyment from driving your decisions.

Means and giving cannot be separated. Give to your local church first, and start with a tenth, understood as a floor rather than a ceiling. After that, I think a good case can be made for giving beyond it: to your neighbors, to those in need, and to Christians doing good work in the world.

Square it away: ask for the day

This week, before you look at any account, take a moment to pray. Think about what lies before you today, ask the Lord for what you need in order to do that work, and ask him for your daily bread. Pray it from the heart, and see how he answers.

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The Lord gives daily bread. He does not give lifetime bread. And he gives it that way on purpose, because he would rather have you at his door every morning than comfortable and far away.