Scripture:
Luke 16:9
9 “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous [a] mammon, that when [b] you fail, they may receive you into an everlasting home.”
a. Worldly wealth

Maybe you’ve caught the overarching theme in the Word this week: God is dealing with our loyalty, our motives, and what we do with what He has given us. If you want to understand the depth of that, just read Psalm 24. Everything we have and everything we are was created by Him, so it all belongs to Him. But I digress.

In today’s portion, the Lord is dealing with how we use what we have been given. He tells a peculiar story about a dishonest manager, and you might even misinterpret it, thinking He is commending dishonesty. But that is not what He is doing.

What He was praising was the wisdom, not the wickedness. The master in the parable praises the manager because he acted “shrewdly” (Luke 16:8), meaning he was clever and thought ahead about his future survival. Jesus points out that worldly people are often more forward-thinking about their earthly futures than God’s people are about their eternal futures.

Q: How are you preparing for your eternal future?
Q: What are you doing with what God has given you? (Time, Treasure, Talents)

Growth happens as we tend the soil and cut away (prune) the things that are not fruitful. This week has been a bit of that, and today’s God-Shot might hit differently because it speaks to what we are doing with what He has provided and how we are using it to prepare for eternity. So the call to action for us today is to evaluate how we spend our resources: our time, treasure, and talent. Are they Kingdom-focused?

Lord, I thank You for Your Word. I pray that as we read this, we would take to heart Jesus’ charge to be shrewder with our resources, spending them not just on what pleases us, but on what pleases You. Transform our hearts and what we value so that You rank at the top of that list, and so that our treasure is stored up in heaven, not here on earth, where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal. In Jesus’ name, Amen!