What does God want the most – our money or our time?

I’m posing this question (to which I’m going to give my own personal response in a moment) because I regularly (but not too often) hear it said that ‘God needs rich people in the church for their money’ or ‘It is good to get rich because God needs the church to have money’.

Now, from what I can see the Bible doesn’t make any comments along these lines. Sure, it does show situations where the money of rich people are used – some of those wealthy people being followers of God. So don’t get me wrong – I’m not trying to say that God won’t use our wealth.

Other interesting Biblical accounts that relate to the subject include:

• Job – where God allowed him to be stripped of his wealth and then given new wealth.
• The coin in the fish – where Jesus took a coin from a fish to pay some tax.
• and there must be loads of examples where God gives the wealth of unbelievers to his children

I reckon that God can get money however he wants, whenever he wants. His difficulty is getting our hearts, getting us to follow him, getting us to show his love to others.

Interestingly there are plenty of examples where God bypasses money completely:

• The oil in the jars that wouldn’t run out.
• Turning water into wine.
• Feeding the 5,000.
• Manna in the desert.

And tonnes of other examples. In fact God’s use of money is the exception! However, if we look at the role of the church we find that God chooses to show himself largely through the church – i.e. through the commitment, time and deeds of those who follow him. It is our time that he needs, more than anything else.

A problem with the idea of ‘earning money for God’ is this:
Many say that we are over consuming and that our exploitation of nature is highly excessive, that we can’t carry on in the way we are. Now, we know that consumption is matched by production (you can’t consume what is not produced!), so if we believe that God wants our production to be as high as possible then one would have to assume that he is cool with the idea of raping the earth…
…I’m not convinced!