Heavenly takeaway beats ‘paying the bills’
How many Christian men find themselves unknowingly trapped by the love of money? Roy McEwen found out during a recent Men’s Mentoring session when the simple but tough question was posed by Eric Asare: ‘What motivates you to go to work?’
Where everyone assumed they were not trapped in the love of money, the wisdom in the question brought revelation. One after another the men shared their motivation, and guess what topped the list ‒ ‘paying the bills’.
All men are welcome to join the Zoom calls and are encouraged to participate. The ground rules are few and simple ‒ no judgment, no recording of the session and all questions and comments are welcome.
Pastor Eric – we call him our ‘trouble-maker brother’ – has a gift from God and can be relied on to pose the right question to get us to the heart of the topic in short order.
A young engineering apprentice in his first job shared his motivation to work: money to pay his family’s bills. He grew up poor, his family never had much, not even a car, and he had determined he was going to provide for his family and get them out of poverty.
Another brother shared the tug-of-war in his life between ministry and paying the bills. Another shared how he’s a clock-watcher and can’t wait to get out of work to do ministry.
During the session we do not seek to correct anyone, but rely on the Holy Spirit to bring revelation. And since we started the mentoring over a year ago, the Holy Spirit has been faithful, and every month has been epic!
We read Proverbs 22:29: “Do you see someone skilled in their work? They will serve before kings.” We encouraged the men on the call and exhorted them to encourage all men to ‘be the best’ with the talents God has given them.
We went even deeper. The process for tithing shows us a phenomenal blueprint: Work ‒ harvest ‒ tithe to God ‒ care for family ‒ care for widows and orphans.
God is the author of our work. He is the one who blessed us with talents and abilities that enable us to work. We need to recognise that simply ‘paying the bills’ is a distraction from the enemy to prevent us from dedicating our work to God.
The mentoring sessions start at 7:30pm and last for 90 minutes, wrapping up with ‘takeaways’ – the heavenly food kind; where each man is given a few minutes to explain what he is taking away from this session to apply to his life.
Every man on the call stated they will take away God’s work blueprint ‒ to accept that the skills each of us has are given by God, to allow God to bless us to work and to give God the tithe from the blessings of work.
God blesses us so that we are able to bless our families and our community. Let’s all break free from the motivation to simply ‘pay the bills’ and aim instead to love God, make the most of our talents, be the best we can be, and enjoy God’s rich blessings over our lives.
This article first appeared in Direction Magazine. For further details, please click here.