Confessions of a workaholic

I attended a breakfast event bright and early this morning hosted by Kiros - a Christian organization that aims to connect, encourage and equip christian business people in the marketplace. There was a speaker today - Kendra VanderMeulen - who shared her confessions as a workaholic. Her sharing today was particularly effective...

Part of her talk was about how there is really no such thing as "financial security". Our society tells us to save and invest and make our money grow for retirement or an emergency or maybe a large purchase like a house or a car or maybe just to buy more and more stuff - all for who? ME of course! But even if we were to do this, at any moment, circumstances could take that all away from us. Even when we die, those material savings we worked so hard for cannot be taken with us. Does it mean that we shouldn't save or invest wisely? No, of course not. But as Christians, we can easily fall into a trap of thinking that we need to work so hard at our jobs because we are the providers of our own financial security and then because we work so hard, we are even entitled to that security. We've earned it after all right?

God teaches us however, that everything we have, our jobs, our paycheques, our homes, cars, everything, all belong to Him. We are merely managers of what He has given us to use in order to bring Him glory - not to bring ourselves glory. God teaches us that He is our sole provider - not ourselves. She shared also about how we tend to horde our money and to grow our savings accounts into bigger and bigger sums. The question is - how much is enough? God doesn't give to everyone the exact same amount - to some He gives more, to some He gives less. But when a believer gives to his brother in need, faith grows on both sides. The giver's faith grows because he sees that he has been used by God and the receiver's faith grows because his need is met in an unexpected way. If we were all given exactly as we needed, there would be no room for faith to grow. It is easy to get caught into a trap of wanting bigger savings accounts - again to feel like we are financially secure - however, we need to remember that it is God's money to be used for His purposes and not for us to acquire more and more material things for our own comfort and satisfaction.

She recommended a book - Treasure Principles - by Randy Alcorn. It's a book about joyful giving (not giving out of a guilty heart). I'd like to read this book as it comes with pretty good reviews. Has anyone read it?