Imagine if someone treated you like this. Let’s say you bring over a housesitter to care for your home over a weekend. You leave her with keys, money, and instructions. And you leave to enjoy your trip.

When you return, you find your house has been painted purple. The locks have been changed, so you ring the doorbell and the housesitter answers. Before you can say anything, she escorts you in proclaiming, “Look how I decorated my house!”

The fireplace has been replaced with an indoor waterfall. Carpet has been replaced with pink tile, and portraits of Elvis on black velvet line the walls.

“This isn’t your house!” You proclaim. “It’s mine.” “Those aren’t your possessions,” God reminds us. “They are mine.”

“The LORD owns the world and everything in it-the heavens, even the highest heavens, are his” (Deut. 10:14). God’s foremost rule of finance is: We own nothing. We are managers, not owners. Stewards, not landlords. Maintenance people, not proprietors. Our money is not ours; it is his.

When God Whispers Your Name

copyright [Word Publishing, 1994] Max Lucado, p. 67,68.

Used by permission