At a missions conference I was at I was thinking about the large amounts of money that the students spent to attend. There were 20,000 people there and most of them paid at least $300 a person and that is with the early bird rate. Then when you think about how much money they were going to spend on books and cds at the conference and also on eating out, we are talking a few million dollars in disposable income that was at the hands of these few individuals.

Then we think about churches here in the states that spend crazy amounts of money on large foyers with fountains, bowling alleys, coffee shops inside the church, and landscaping. We look at this and we think of how many Jesus films can be produced with that money since it only takes $25,000 to make a Jesus film. Money is not going out fast enough.

We must remember in all of this to not allow our pride to get the best of us. It is wrong to horde money and spend it lavishly on ourselves, but it is also wrong to judge how others should be spending money, especially when they perceive they are pouring it out upon Jesus feet as a bottle of rich perfume. When this happened in the Gospel’s it wasn’t Jesus who got upset at how money was spent, but It was Judas. It later said that he was stealing from the treasury and he wanted the money to himself. The Scriptures are true when it says that we have to guard our hearts for out of them come the issues of life. In self-examination, gentleness and humility let us maintain keeping planks out of our own eyes, so that we can better encourage, challenge and equip our brothers and sisters to remove the splinter from theirs, so they could more readily see Jesus.