Why the Edwards would never win Mega Millions

Teresa and I were driving home yesterday from an excursion in Wake Forest when we passed the gas station and saw the Mega Millions jackpot at $400 million. Now perhaps some of my more fundamentalists readers would be aghast at my even consideration of the lotto ticket, but then again, I'm pretty sure that there aren't many fundamentalists to begin with on the blogging sphere :) Only kidding. Fundamentalists can be pretty angry people, thus they would make excellent bloggers!

Anyway, so I joking asked Teresa if she wanted me to pick up a ticket, to which she replied, "There's no point. You know God would never let us win the lotto." I loved it! There was my bride living out 1 Cor. 10:13. You see she's wise enough and self-aware enough to know we couldn't handle that kind of money. No matter what, we'd inevitably fall into the sin of bad stewardship. God, knowing our shortcomings, would thus never tempt us in such a way, because He knows we'd fail!

Have you ever thought about, though, the concept of bad stewardship as a sin? I mean so often in the church we think of stewardship simply as the tithe (a 10% offering of one's gross or net income, depending on your convictions), but we rarely think of what we do with the other 90%. For many, I dare say, we feel comfortable to do whatever we want with the 90% so long as we've given the 10%. How far short of the mark this perspective falls! You see part of the Lord's Prayer involves a prayer for provision, and this petition falls right after praying for God's will and kingdom. In other words, in the prayer what we are asking God for is that He would use us entirely in the accomplishment of His will in the advancement of His kingdom, and, thus, that He would provide for our bodies what we need in order to do this. Simply put, the lesson of the Lord's Prayer is that everything belongs to God, and thus everything should be used for His purposes.

Now I'm not saying what is excess and what is not, but the point I'm trying to make is that we need to be misery in the sense of thinking biblically about every dollar we spend. This pertains to the church as well. Here at Lake Gaston Baptist we have our annual budget proposal coming up this Sunday. This is an incredibly important meeting for this is the time when we as the corporate body are to be prayerfully considering how we should use the money God has blessed us with for His will and the advancement of His Kingdom. We are not asking how we should use the money according to my desires, opinions, or wishes. But how can we optimally obey the will of God in the advancement of His Kingdom with that which He has blessed us.

It is vital as individuals and as churches that we practice holistic stewardship with everything. Jesus tells us in Luke 16:10, "One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much."