not abuses but good uses...

the bible gives us some practical uses of our wealth. we've dealt with some abuses now lets look at some good uses of our wealth. and a good place to start is in the book written by the wisest and wealthiest man in the bible. let's go to the book of proverbs in the ot written by solomon.

here's one, proverbs 21.20 (lb), the wise man saves for the future, but the foolish man spends whatever he gets. that's a good one.

here's another one, proverbs 30.25 (niv), ants are creatures of little strength, yet they store up their food in the summer.

JESUS was an awesome communicator and one of HIS tools that HE used was parables, HE told stories and over half of them dealt with money. HE talked more about money than HE did about heaven and hell. HE talked about investment, how the wise man invested his money and the foolish man didn't invest his money. and HE came back and said "you're wicked." it's wicked not to make our money work for us. when we save our money we get our money to work for us rather than working for our money.

now in order to develop the habit of saving we need to learn some things and one of them is to live on a margin. that means live on less than you make. we in the usa aren't very good at this. back in 2005 the number-crunching folks at the u.s. commerce department's bureau of economic analysis said that americans spent more than they earned in 2005 -- a negative savings rate of 0.5 percent for the year. that's the first time that had happened since the great depression.

a man from a different era, john d rockerfeller said many times, "save 10%, tithe 10%, live on 80%." obviously that worked for him. he was a very wealthy and influential person.

i think the principle of margin also applies to our time. one of the reasons we are late to things is because we plan to arrive on time. and if you want to arrive on time you actually have to plan to arrive early. leave on a margin so when all the unexpected things that are going to happen come up, you will arrive on time.

let's start there with some thoughts about good uses of wealth from the front porch...