Money Habit 4 & 5 Steward Wisely
Introduction
The fear of failure is a powerful thing. Um it can really impact you in certain situations. Uh many of you know the story that um a couple of years ago 2020 I uh I uh went to Moore College to study and um for a number of years I had uh I had asked more college originally if I could get credit for my youthwork study and start uh more college partway in but uh originally I was told no. As I applied and I looked at the list of subjects I had to uh do again, my soul was destroyed slightly. And so I end up saying sending a letter saying, “Please, can you reconsider? Can I get credit for study I’ve already done?” To to my surprise, I received a reply that said, “Yes, you can get credit for the study you’ve already done, provided you can sit an exam to prove you have kept your Greek, so you still know your Greek.” Now, the catch apart from the challenge of keeping your Greek is I had never done Greek. Uh, and so, uh, I worked out that if I gave myself 2 days off for Christmas and one day off a week, I had 40 days between that date and the day I had to sit the exam for more college. So, I had 40 days to cover a year of Greek and uh and Susie kept reminding me the plan was I could do two years of more college if I passed that or the slow process was going to be seven years if I had to start again and do some things part-time. So, she kept saying 40 days in the wilderness versus seven years uh it’s worth it. The fear of failure was well within me. I’ve never studied anything so much in my life and uh and I’ve never done particularly well at academics. The fear of failure was so strong in me that it got me a distinction on that entrance exam. Uh and and so thanks. Um and many of you know Andrew C. he was helping out with lecturing at the time. He he told this story to the lecturer and said um oh Daniel did this and the lecturer said ah he must be particularly prone to academics. And Andrew said, “I don’t think he will mind me telling you he is not.” It was the fear of failure. It was the impact of what would happen if I didn’t. And I dug deep and I saw results from that. It’s a powerful thing. There were studies done in the ‘9s around students and what the fear of failure does to them when it comes to study, particularly first year of uni. Uh once you pass first year of uni, the fear goes down. The grades probably go down too. uh and it’s like ah I can do this and everything settles but that first year at least 40% of students they say will achieve better than they expected because the fear of failure. Uh there’s another around just over 40% that uh will have like a pessimistic approach like they’ll just assume they’re not going to do well. There’s a small percentage that just deliberately won’t put any effort in so they have an excuse for why they did so just go ah like I didn’t really try so it’s fine that I failed but the fear of failure will will motivate most people. Uh it’s a it’s a powerful thing and we see this parable in Matthew 25 where there is exactly that theme uh driven through there of what impacts people with their serving. And what we’re really encouraged in this story is to not bury our blessing, to use it and not bury it. Uh, one of the amazing things about the parable Jesus tells in Matthew 25, uh, is who it’s told to. It’s a teaching. It’s part of a teaching that he does on the Mount of Olives. We think of a couple of teaching groups of teaching Jesus does. We have what we got often call the sermon on the mount, which is to a a large crowd of of different groups of people. The teaching here on the Mount of Olives is we’re told just to his closest disciples. Uh three of the gospels record it and it’s right after his last visit to the temple in Jerusalem. So Jesus goes into the Jerusalem for the to the temple for the last time and then he comes out on the mountain and he talks to his disciples. You can imagine in his head there’s some real significant things he’s working through as he looks towards his death. But one of the most significant themes in that bit of teaching is not what’s going to happen over the next week with his death and resurrection. Uh it’s it’s what’s going to happen beyond that. He wants to prepare his disciples for the time after he ascends into heaven, sends his holy spirit, and there’s the time of waiting for Jesus return. What that means is that teaching right there to his disciples in that moment is a teaching directly to us in our moment because we are in that age. We are in the age after he has ascended and sent his spirit. We are the ones in this what what’s sometimes referred to as the age of the church where we are uh waiting for his return. But the message we get from the the parable of these bags of silver is that we’re not just waiting. We’re working. That’s the picture we get here that this isn’t just waiting for him to come back and and sitting like we’re we’re waiting for the doctor to call us to come in, but we’re actually assigned a task and we are told, “Don’t bury your blessing. Use it. Invest it. Serve God with all we have.” have. So, as we finish this series on the barefoot disciple and thinking about how we use our money, but also everything we have, this is the reminder we want that don’t bury what we have, but think about how we can use it for God’s glory. Because we’re not just waiting, we’re working. And so, we get this story where it’s a parable. It’s a story Jesus tells to teach a point. A man gets his servants together. He gives them different bags of silver. We’re told to the first one five, to the second one uh two, and to the last one one. And we see a contrast between those that immediately go and start putting their money to work versus the one who goes and buries his uh treasure that he’s been given. and he’s sitting in the category of just waiting for the master to return while the others are working and this is what we’re called to do. There’s a danger I think sometimes when we come to the to uh our theology of work that because work is hard because there’s many things that we find difficult uh with work we often will associate work as something that’s not godly something that’s against God. In fact, in the story of the Garden of Eden, we see that work becomes hard because of sin. So, oh, we’re working. We think we’re working because of sin in this world. But that’s not the theology of work. There’s work in the Bible before sin. Adam and Eve are called to tend the garden and name the animals. Work itself isn’t a result of sin. The hard element of work is a result of sin. can assume even that in glory in heaven we will still work of some description still have different elements of worship in our lives that might look like work but it won’t be the hard work that we see and so work itself is not something of sin. The theology of work is that we’re called to do in fact John Wesley when he he preached a sermon about uh money and he summarized it with these three points he said we’re called to gain all we can, save all we can, give all we can. Now, at first it sounds like a pretty worldly kind of view. Gain all we can. I mean, he doesn’t say earn all we can. He’s talking about more than that. But gain all we can, he’s not talking about kind of burning ourselves into the ground, but if we have a healthy view of work, then we should be working hard. We should be working hard in all of what is both in employment and outside of employment. There’s a ro a call that we have to do all we can for what God has called us to. And so we gain all we can in honest diligent work. He says save all we can. Once again I think we can fall in the trap of thinking he’s meaning something quite worldly. Uh although saving is an interesting idea when we think about uh what God is calling us to because often I think we’ll think if luxurious spending is ungodly then surely prudent saving is a godly thing. You know, just because we’re not spending it. But even that, we would say there is a danger there that we’re just putting things away. In fact, John Wesley’s words are if you’re just saving for the sake of it, then you might as well throw your money in the ocean. If it’s never used, what good is it to anyone, including you? And so there’s a challenge there that we get this balance between uh h living a life that is uh in the barefoot disciple we’ve used the language of living simply uh verse also thinking about what we’re putting away. John Wesley’s point is once you’ve figured out enough that you need to live on then give the excess you have towards