Is God Just An 'Add-On' In Your Life?

Reader: Jon Watson

Date: 17th December 2022

Passage: Matthew 6:24

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I speak to myself when I think about these words of Jesus. He is talking about people trying to serve two masters at the same time. On the one hand we who are Christians do want to serve God. We follow him, we thank him for all he has done for us through the Lord Jesus, and we genuinely place great value on heavenly things. So far so good! But — and it is a big but — we also, if we are honest with ourselves, love what is here called money. The word really means more than just money. It means that in which we trust. That raises a big question: do we really trust in money/wealth/property/the things that we buy?

When Jesus speaks about serving, he is using the kind of service a slave gave to a master — the slave had to do the master's will. We wouldn't like to think that we served the material things in life like that would we? Yet I think that very often we treat God as an 'add-on' in our lives and just get on with living in much the same way as the rest of folk around us, just as secular in most of our ways — except that we go to church!

So we must give ourselves a check-up every now and then to take seriously how we are serving God. An 'add-on' attitude must never be true of our Christian walk as we think of what Jesus has done for us. He and only he must be our Master served in love.

Lord, I don't trust my sinful heart. Please help me to reject the things I so often put before you in my life. Amen.