John-David

Have you ever seen a castle in person? What about a palace? Some of you might be thinking, “what’s the difference?” English uses the terms somewhat interchangeably. They are however two different things. A castle was designed for defense and palace was designed for luxury. Palaces focus on beauty, comfort, and accessibility. Castles focus on strength, location, and resources. A good king or lord built castles to protect their lands and their people. A castle helped a lord provide for the defense of his people. A palace provide a luxurious place from which to rule.

Now, sometimes, lord misused castles and they actually used the suppress the people or to keep themselves away from the people, but in a perfect world, they were used to protect people. Castles were designed with places to store food and water. They were designed to be easily defendable.

I was listening to a sermon the other day from the Summit Church on James 5 and I was challenged by something they said that I decided to pass it along with my own take. They were talking about money and they made the statement, “give extravagantly, save sufficiently, spend carefully.” This is my own take on it. There are basically three things we can do with our money: spend, save, and give.

The challenge is to do them in the right order. If we spend extravagantly and then save and give as we can, it is much like using our money to build our own palace. We are giving ourselves the opportunity to live in luxury. If we save extravagantly it is like building castles for ourselves, to protect us from those around us. If we do it in the right order, give extravagantly, save sufficiently, spend carefully, we may still end up building a castle, but it will have the right purpose.

I was personally challenged by this idea and I hope that you will be as well. I also hope that parents will teach their kids this pattern as well. Getting our money and resources out of alignment with God’s priorities is incredibly dangerous. God has blessed many of us with tremendous resources. Can you honestly say that you give extravagantly. Jesus gave his life, I would say that is pretty extravagant giving. I would challenge you to pray about the condition of your heart when it comes to treasures. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (ESV, Mt. 6:21).