Training Your Children to Manage Money - Resources - Eternal Perspective Ministries

Our children's ministry leader shared the following article by Randy Alcorn with families at our church. It offers 10 practical ways to teach our children to handle money in a God-honoring way. This is an insightful article that will take only a few minutes to read.

Here's the intro:

"In the days of the Klondike gold rush, two miners struck a huge deposit. Feverishly excited, they unearthed more and more gold each day. Meanwhile they neglected to store up provisions for the winter. Then came the first blizzard. Nearly frozen, one scrawled a shaky note explaining their predicament. Months later a prospecting party discovered the note, along with two frozen bodies lying on top of a huge pile of gold.

Today countless children grow up begging and grabbing and clinging onto all the things money can buy. As adults, they rarely outgrow this shallow self-centeredness, but simply graduate to more money and bigger toys. Living their lives on earth as if this were all there is, they fail to prepare for their eternal future.

Christ told the story of a rich fool, to whom God said, “This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself? This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:20-21).

Five minutes after we die we’ll know exactly how we should have lived. But then it will be too late. The good news is, God gave us his Word so we don’t have to wait till we die to discover how we should have lived. And God gave our children Christian fathers, so we could show them what the world will not—how to live now in light of eternity."

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Training Your Children to Manage Money - Resources - Eternal Perspective Ministries

J

Reflections on a Life Cut Short

Today I learned that a co-worker's wife lost her baby. This news is always sad, but I find myself sympathizing with them more than I often do. The past few weeks Emma has been growing stronger and stronger, kicking more and more. The realization that God has formed a new life within Karen is washing over me daily. As I place myself in this co-workers shoes, I am drawn to tears at the loss he and his family must be experiencing. Life is indeed a frail and temporary gift from God.

Jonathan Edwards offers some vivid insight on this issue. He writes, "The world tries to prove that a man is not on the very brink of eternity, and that the next step will not be into another world, but to no avail. The unseen, unthought-of ways and means by which people suddenly go out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering, and there are countless places in this covering that are so weak that the covering will not bear their weight, and these places are not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at midday; the sharpest sight cannot discern them" ("Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God").

Life is a trust. It is an opportunity to recognize our Creator and Redeemer and live lives for Him and His purposes. He has granted us a few years in which to live for His glory and to declare His glory to everyone we know.

Father, grant Your peace and comfort for this grieving family. May they place the faith and hope in You and Your goodness in the midst of their pain. Help us to recognize that we constantly walk "on the brink of eternity." Help us to see that life is a gracious gift and not an entitlement we receive by virtue of some inherent good in us. May we be good stewards of these few days together. May we never throw a day away as though we will have a million more. May we urgently share the good news of the Gospel of Your grace in light of the bad news of ours/others sinfulness and condemnation apart from that grace. May we fear and honor You and be found in Christ when he comes or You call us home.

Grace and Peace,

J