| Week
This past weekend, we continued our “Parables” series as special guest Alan Platt returned to Calvary to share from the Parable of the Rich Fool. In this message, we explored three amazing things we can experience in Christ, we discovered the life-changing gift of contentment, and we learned why we shouldn’t place our value in stuff.
Watch the video below to see a few highlights from the teaching and share it with your friends via social media. To watch the message in its entirety, click here.
For the Note Takers
The Greatest Freedom Is to be Able to Appreciate Without Coveting: Contentment makes a poor man rich; discontentment makes a rich man poor. We spend an absurd amount of time acquiring, moving, storing, and insuring stuff! So often, instead of making our stuff work for us, we end up working for our stuff; instead of our stuff serving us, we serve our stuff. We buy things we don’t need, often with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t even like. Two Primary Myths About Stuff- More stuff will make you happy: Often people feel the illusion of a happy moment when they get more stuff—a brief moment of exhilaration. The reason for this “happy” moment is not because we got what we wanted, but because for a brief moment in time, we stopped wanting, and thus we experience a moment of happiness. Sadly, it doesn’t last very long and we immediately go back to wanting. And even worse, now we want even more. Nothing we get will ever be enough. This creates an obsession with stuff, which reveals a false identity and an internal discontentment. Interestingly, many times you don’t need to add more things to your life; instead you need to give some up!
- More stuff gives you more security: Proverbs 18:11 (MSG) says, “The rich think their wealth protects them; they imagine themselves safe behind it.” To address this, Jesus shares a parable that we call the Parable of the Rich Fool. What we discover through this parable is that those who lay up treasures for themselves on earth, who put their trust in their resources and their stuff, who place their security in earthly things, are not rich toward God. Jesus is challenging us to shift our appetite.
- See God as your source
- Live within your means
- Get out of debt
- Bless God’s work
- Create a giving culture
- Identity: We are complete in Christ, accepted, secure, and significant in the eyes of the Father. And it is the Father who defines our identity. He has called us sons and daughters, He has adopted us. Sadly, many Christians walk around living with an orphan spirit; they’ve traded their sonship for an orphan lifestyle.
- Intimacy: The reward of Christianity is not heaven, but a restored intimacy with the Father. Heaven promises the full experience of this relationship!
- Sufficiency: Because of this restored union between us and the Father through Jesus Christ, we always have abundance for every good work.