Legacy: Owning My Influence

Multiplying My Influence

Legacy: Owning My Influence

Luke 16:13-16
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.

How you live will determine what you leave.

Passion: A desire to own our influence
Above Reproach: No handles of scandal
Family Integrity: Faithful to spouse and children
Emotionally Balanced: Temperate and self-controlled
Respectable: Obedience flowing from spiritual identity
Hospitable: Inviting people into your imperfect heart
Able to Teach: Acquire, Believe, Communicate truth
Gentle: Strength Under Control

1 Timothy 3:1-3
Here is a trustworthy saying: Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task. Now the overseer is to be above reproach, faithful to his wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

Love of money describes the lust for gaining money in all possible ways and the desire to keep money at every cost.

1 Timothy 6:3-6
If anyone teaches otherwise and does not agree to the sound instruction of our Lord Jesus Christ and to godly teaching, they are conceited and understand nothing. They have an unhealthy interest in controversies and quarrels about words that result in envy, strife, malicious talk, evil suspicions and constant friction between people of corrupt mind, who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain. But godliness with contentment is great gain.

Am I content with my relationship with Jesus or do I need money and the stuff money buys to really be satisfied?

1 Timothy 6:7
For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it.

1 Timothy 6:9-10
Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Hebrews 13:5
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

1. Be thankful.

2. Stay Humble.

1 Timothy 6:17
Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

Deuteronomy 8:17-19
You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth….

3. Stay Dependent.

1 Timothy 6:17
Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

The extraordinary sameness of the hellish gravity of their famous lives is a divine warning, for God sets the ghosts of these financial giants as…witnesses to a nation about to run amok in materialism…. Yet few take serious notice. Perhaps it is because most, especially if they are Christians, do not aspire to be the head of the world’s greatest monopoly or to the vulgar display of the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Instead, they are content to cultivate a less encumbering level of wealth—not realizing that the danger for themselves are the same as for the super rich: a growing delusion that this world is everything, that someday they will be content, that “providing for one’s family” means being able to give them more and better, that relationships will be enriched by wealth, that wealth will make them better people.
R. Kent Hughes

4. Enjoy God and his blessings.

1 Timothy 6:17
Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

5. Be generous and willing to share.

1 Timothy 6:18
Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.

6. Lasting enjoyment comes when you invest in eternal things.

1 Timothy 6:19
In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.