Phil’s Story

 New Purpose

As I moved deeper into a life of following Christ, I knew I had a real desperation to truly know God and to please him in all that I did. I thought about who I was and what God had given me to work with. Finances, of course, had been at the center of my life. I realized that I needed to begin seeing money in terms of God’s kingdom. God hasn’t given us time, talent, and treasure just so we can hoard it or spend it on ourselves. All of our resources can be used to glorify him.

So where to start? I kept coming back to that powerful command from Jesus, given in the Sermon on the Mount: No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. (Matthew 6:24)

That verse became a new foundation for me. At first, the words seemed very cut and dried—as if one must choose to love or hate money, with no middle ground. It was a very difficult verse to understand, so I began to study it carefully. I learned what I could from sermons and Bible studies, and the truth began to come into focus for me.

When Jesus made this statement—and several others on the subject—he used the word Mammon for what we translate here as money. This word means “all that one possesses apart from his body and his life.” In other words, things—stuff, whether it’s money or what it buys. The word Mammon also comes from a root word that means entrust. That’s a serious, heightened version of trust. Similar to today, people of that time would give their money to a banker, and they had to place all their faith in that banker to take care of their worldly wealth. Jesus is saying that we can’t fully entrust ourselves to both God and possessions. We can’t divide it all up and invest 50/50.

But Jesus did a little more with this word Mammon. He spoke of “serving” Mammon, making Mammon the name of a master who can lord it over his slave. In his day there was genuine slavery, and the word he used in this verse for serve was associated with that kind of servitude. So this is serious trust and serious service.

Ultimately, here is what Jesus meant: As a human being, you can’t help but serve something or someone. You will serve God, or you will serve things and stuff. You’d better make that decision carefully, because one of these will win, and it will win all of you. You’re entrusting no less than your heart and soul—your eternal destiny. Jesus says I must choose one master, and everything else must be in submission to that decision.

When Jesus talked about Mammon, he was making the point that whether you realize it or not, you are in service. You may live under the illusion of total freedom, that you think what you want and do what you want, beholden to no one. But true freedom is indeed an illusion. You are always pursuing, or you wouldn’t be a human being. Pursuing what? It could be money or comfort. It could be power or pleasure or acclaim. But something drives you, it drives you down its own road, and Jesus says that it’s impossible to travel on two roads at the same time.

I came to understand I had clearly been driving down a certain road, and it was the endless road of pursuing more. But it ultimately had no real destination other than chasing a mirage ending in heartbreak. I wasn’t enjoying the journey. It’s a crossroads moment when we realize this. I only found true rest when I went back to that banker called Mammon, withdrew everything, and deposited it within the Bank of Heaven.