BEING RICH TOWARD GOD

What does it mean to be truly rich? 

¹⁶ And he (Jesus) told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. ¹⁷ He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’

¹⁸ “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. ¹⁹ And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’

²⁰ “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’

²¹ “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”(Luke 13)

The rich man ends up with a great harvest. He does not stop for a moment to think that a harvest is dependent on many things that he has no control over including rain, good weather, absence of pests and so on. But as soon as he gets the harvest, he owns it and uses the terms, ‘my crops’ and ‘my surplus grain’ to describe it. Man goes about his life owning the things he possesses little stopping to reflect that all he is a gift from God.

But that’s not enough- there are enough Christians who acknowledge that God is behind their blessings but fail to loosen their grasp over them. The ownership of all things they have is too tight to allow them to give it away in accordance with the will of God. Here the man could have chosen to give away some of his excess crop though Jesus specifically does not highlight that fact. But his inability to give away what was his forced him to go to the extreme step of building bigger barns to store his surplus.

He then goes on to make his riches his security. To say that he could take it easy and have fun with life because he had enough and more stored away for a lifetime was foolish because man has no control over several aspects of his existence here on earth including the length of his life.

So what does it mean to be rich toward God? Everything the rich man in this story was not- acknowledging that God is truly the author of our lives and all we have, being willing to loosen our grasp over what we possess in accordance with the will of God and making God our security despite our riches. All this becomes possible only when man comes into a living relationship with God and honors him above all in his life.

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