What would you do if you had won the Power Ball jackpot? The big lottery winning? Currently the winning amount is over $300 million. At one time the winning amount was in the billions. I have often wondered what I would do if I had won the lottery, even if I won just a million. I have seen documentaries and read articles about people who had won the lottery and what they had done with their winnings. The majority of those winner ended up right where they were before they earned their winnings. Some end up in worse situations.
Well of course the government and other organizations will take their share of the winnings but when you get your cut there will be an extraordinary amount of money remaining. Let’s face the truth, it will be more money you will have ever have in your entire life and the amount of emotions you will experience will be overwhelming.
I have ask many people what they would do if they had won and I receive a wide array of answers from paying off their debts, quite their job, buy a new home or car, buy a boat, go on extravagant vacations, and purchase various items they wished to possess. For some the answers were quite surprising; start a business, increase their education, read more, lose weight, help their community or people in need, or invest some of it.
I’m reminded of a parable the Lord told about a rich fool. “Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12: 13-21)
Now, I am not in any way condemning the idea of playing the lottery. What I would like to do is bring to question what would you do if you had and why. For those who wish to gain material possession to feel like you have some purpose to life, I feel sorry for you. If you have not thought about nor considered the necessity of purchasing a house or a new car prior to winning the lottery you’re doing nothing more than seeking selfish worth that has no value. Attempting to make a status of yourself by material possessions is empty and worthless. Your character should outweigh your wealth and possessions. Scripture says, “Better to be a no body and have a servant than to pretend to be someone and have no food.” (Proverbs 12:9) I have often found that those who believe they have value to their community because of how much they have are shallow, conceded, pretentious people. What is even worse is people think very little of them. Worse than that, people will be two faced around those who are wealthy.
For the others let me ask you this, why must you be wealthy in order to do the things you desire to do? Do you need to be wealthy to invest in your community, better educate yourself, or be involved in your family? The problem really is the fact that you don’t know how to manage your time rather than not having enough money? You believe enough money will give you enough time.
Two points of thought. In our society there tends to be this drive for work rather than to live, to have a life. Rather than working to live, we live to work. We spend more time working each day and receive little to no satisfaction in what we do and the return is just enough to live on. We get up in the morning, rush to get ready, down our breakfast or purchase something on the way to work, spend eight to twelve hours a day at work, go home in a bad mood, spend four to five hours with our family, go to bed to get little sleep and get up in the morning to do it all over again. The weekends go by so fast that we don’t really get to enjoy our time off due to more rushing to go shopping, rushing through traffic, navigating around others in the same mood we are in trying to find the items we need or want at Walmart, go home to manage all the things we just purchase to realize we forgot something (hopefully it isn’t one of the kids). Then we need to find time to cut the grass, fix the toilet, run junior to his ball game, take sissy to her gymnastics class, or simply forget everything to just to sit down in front to the television to watch our favorite sporting event or movie.
The second one is, I saw this posted on Facebook and thought it was a wonderful point, if you were to pass away today how fast would your employer fill your spot? That’s right, what is your real value at your job? Consider this, what is your real value to your family? What are you really invested in? Yea, you may say, “I take the kids to their sporting events. That’s doing something with them, I’m investing in them.” Now ask yourself, do you take them to those events because you have to or you want to? Yea, you spent your hard earned money for them to participate in those activities but why did you do sign them up in the first place?
Now consider this, what habits and activities does your family see you doing? Do they witness you doing things to better yourself, to be creative, to help others? Ask yourself, do you need to be wealthy to accomplish those things? In some manner money does buy your time. If you had enough money to pay off all your debts, put money away into savings, to complete projects around your house that you have been putting off due to a lack of time and/or money, you will relax more knowing that if you were to lose your job today for some unforeseen reason you wouldn’t have to worry. You would have the time to take up a new hobby or project, you would seek education or job training that you desire to get into that will lead to new employment or become self-employed. You would find the time to read more or learn a new language. However, do you really need more money to make those things happen or do you simply need to learn to manage your time? We understand the importance of managing our money, save for the future and those rainy days but do we consider the importance of managing our time?
Money and time don’t necessarily go hand in hand. We can manage them individually as well as together. More importantly the government can't tax our time. When managing these two ask yourself what is the purpose? As Christians our fist purpose is to bring glory to the Father (John 15:8). Our second purpose is to help others. Our third purpose is to better ourselves. Always strive to be 1% better than you were the day before. Remove distractions and limit activities that have no value or purpose to your person. When looking at the three purposes to life I use the acronym JOY: Jesus, Others, Yourself. We have a great deal of time at our disposal. We don’t have to work for it or earn it. We already have it. Yet, the limitations of time is far different than the limitations of money. We never know when our time will run out but our bank account tells us how much money we have at the moment and what we are doing with that money. To manage our time we have to consider what we are doing for ourselves. There is no account to tell us exactly what we are spending our time on, whether something is pending or overdrawn. Time is time, we have an abundance of time but it is limited to how well we use our time and when our time is finished, which we do not know when that moment will arrive.
So allow me to encourage you to start taking note on what you are spending both your time and your money on and is it worth spending on those things. Take account and be a good steward of your money as well as your time. Make the most of both and find your wealth in your purpose rather than your bank account.
Well of course the government and other organizations will take their share of the winnings but when you get your cut there will be an extraordinary amount of money remaining. Let’s face the truth, it will be more money you will have ever have in your entire life and the amount of emotions you will experience will be overwhelming.
I have ask many people what they would do if they had won and I receive a wide array of answers from paying off their debts, quite their job, buy a new home or car, buy a boat, go on extravagant vacations, and purchase various items they wished to possess. For some the answers were quite surprising; start a business, increase their education, read more, lose weight, help their community or people in need, or invest some of it.
I’m reminded of a parable the Lord told about a rich fool. “Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12: 13-21)
Now, I am not in any way condemning the idea of playing the lottery. What I would like to do is bring to question what would you do if you had and why. For those who wish to gain material possession to feel like you have some purpose to life, I feel sorry for you. If you have not thought about nor considered the necessity of purchasing a house or a new car prior to winning the lottery you’re doing nothing more than seeking selfish worth that has no value. Attempting to make a status of yourself by material possessions is empty and worthless. Your character should outweigh your wealth and possessions. Scripture says, “Better to be a no body and have a servant than to pretend to be someone and have no food.” (Proverbs 12:9) I have often found that those who believe they have value to their community because of how much they have are shallow, conceded, pretentious people. What is even worse is people think very little of them. Worse than that, people will be two faced around those who are wealthy.
For the others let me ask you this, why must you be wealthy in order to do the things you desire to do? Do you need to be wealthy to invest in your community, better educate yourself, or be involved in your family? The problem really is the fact that you don’t know how to manage your time rather than not having enough money? You believe enough money will give you enough time.
Two points of thought. In our society there tends to be this drive for work rather than to live, to have a life. Rather than working to live, we live to work. We spend more time working each day and receive little to no satisfaction in what we do and the return is just enough to live on. We get up in the morning, rush to get ready, down our breakfast or purchase something on the way to work, spend eight to twelve hours a day at work, go home in a bad mood, spend four to five hours with our family, go to bed to get little sleep and get up in the morning to do it all over again. The weekends go by so fast that we don’t really get to enjoy our time off due to more rushing to go shopping, rushing through traffic, navigating around others in the same mood we are in trying to find the items we need or want at Walmart, go home to manage all the things we just purchase to realize we forgot something (hopefully it isn’t one of the kids). Then we need to find time to cut the grass, fix the toilet, run junior to his ball game, take sissy to her gymnastics class, or simply forget everything to just to sit down in front to the television to watch our favorite sporting event or movie.
The second one is, I saw this posted on Facebook and thought it was a wonderful point, if you were to pass away today how fast would your employer fill your spot? That’s right, what is your real value at your job? Consider this, what is your real value to your family? What are you really invested in? Yea, you may say, “I take the kids to their sporting events. That’s doing something with them, I’m investing in them.” Now ask yourself, do you take them to those events because you have to or you want to? Yea, you spent your hard earned money for them to participate in those activities but why did you do sign them up in the first place?
Now consider this, what habits and activities does your family see you doing? Do they witness you doing things to better yourself, to be creative, to help others? Ask yourself, do you need to be wealthy to accomplish those things? In some manner money does buy your time. If you had enough money to pay off all your debts, put money away into savings, to complete projects around your house that you have been putting off due to a lack of time and/or money, you will relax more knowing that if you were to lose your job today for some unforeseen reason you wouldn’t have to worry. You would have the time to take up a new hobby or project, you would seek education or job training that you desire to get into that will lead to new employment or become self-employed. You would find the time to read more or learn a new language. However, do you really need more money to make those things happen or do you simply need to learn to manage your time? We understand the importance of managing our money, save for the future and those rainy days but do we consider the importance of managing our time?
Money and time don’t necessarily go hand in hand. We can manage them individually as well as together. More importantly the government can't tax our time. When managing these two ask yourself what is the purpose? As Christians our fist purpose is to bring glory to the Father (John 15:8). Our second purpose is to help others. Our third purpose is to better ourselves. Always strive to be 1% better than you were the day before. Remove distractions and limit activities that have no value or purpose to your person. When looking at the three purposes to life I use the acronym JOY: Jesus, Others, Yourself. We have a great deal of time at our disposal. We don’t have to work for it or earn it. We already have it. Yet, the limitations of time is far different than the limitations of money. We never know when our time will run out but our bank account tells us how much money we have at the moment and what we are doing with that money. To manage our time we have to consider what we are doing for ourselves. There is no account to tell us exactly what we are spending our time on, whether something is pending or overdrawn. Time is time, we have an abundance of time but it is limited to how well we use our time and when our time is finished, which we do not know when that moment will arrive.
So allow me to encourage you to start taking note on what you are spending both your time and your money on and is it worth spending on those things. Take account and be a good steward of your money as well as your time. Make the most of both and find your wealth in your purpose rather than your bank account.
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