I was reading something this past week, and I came across the word avarice. I did not know what it meant so I looked it up. It means extreme greed for wealth or material gain. Simply said, it’s the love of money. It is when money is your first love and your motive behind everything you do.
Having money is not the problem, of course. We all need it to exist. The problem is the attitude toward money. When money is the main variable in decisions, the outcome is greed. In the most extreme cases, it’s avarice. It dries up the compassion of the soul. It lowers the bar for decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong. It is the inspiration for immorality. It is the root of all kinds of evil.
Envy is one kind of evil. The fruit it produces is covetousness, which is often powerfully present in people who lack money and wealth. Envy fuels the political tension and economic antagonism that exists between rich and poor.
Loving money is like a weed. When you want to kill a weed, you have to kill the root. To kill the root, you need to spray it with weed killer designed to attack the root. The weed killer for an improper attitude toward money is God’s word. When you “spray your mind” with God’s word every day, it penetrates your heart, kills the love of money, and changes your attitude.
Life does not consist of an abundance of possessions. Regardless of your net worth, God wants you to be rich in the assets of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. The value of these assets isn’t decreased by a sell-off in the stock market, nor can it be destroyed by inflation.
Love God, not gold. There’s only one letter separating the two words, but a wealth of difference in meaning between them.
MindWolves 