Live For What Matters Most

Have you ever heard the saying, “Old too soon, wise too late”? Don’t let that be your story. Three of the titans who built America were Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller. After attending Vanderbilt’s funeral, Carnegie and Rockefeller spent the rest of their lives seeing how much money they could give away to do good. Death has a way of showing us the brevity of life and changing our perspective. Carnegie died in his eighties and Rockefeller in his nineties, but they both died! We all do. The question is, will you merely make a living or will you make a difference? One businessman told his friend, “I don’t think I’m trapped on this treadmill forever, but I’m certainly involved with it right now…it’s the old merry-go-round of how much money is enough. And it’s never enough. Three years ago I thought, ‘Just a little more…now I make twice as much, and it’s still not enough.’” Solomon wrote, “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10 NAS). Have you told yourself that when you get a certain amount of money you’ll be happy and secure? Maybe and maybe not. When you trust in anything other than God, you live fearfully because you’ll always be vulnerable to circumstances you cannot control. Jesus bottom-lined it this way: “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need” (Matthew 6:33 NLT).