The Role of Faithfulness in Financial Success

Every time a new year comes around, I usually start it with money on my mind. It’s a time to set budgets, plan for vacations, and start thinking about tax returns. The vacation planning is fun, but it’s not always enjoyable to take a hard look at your finances. Yuck.

Year in and year out, the statistics show that financial disagreements are the most frequent types of arguments that married couples have, and financial problems is the most-stated cause of divorce.

How you and your spouse deal with money can be vitally important to the health of your marriage.

As I look toward a new year, I keep returning to Proverbs 29:20. It states, “A faithful man will be richly blessed, but one eager to get rich will not go unpunished.”

What role does faithfulness play in a healthy approach to finances?

We live in a culture that prizes immediacy. We want quick service at the drive-thru. We use our microwave ovens multiple times a day. We want websites to load in an instant and videos to stream without a hitch. We’re surrounded by weight-loss ads promising success by this weekend!

We want everything now. And that means a lot of us can be sitting ducks for get-rich-quick schemes. Sometimes they come through malicious websites or spam emails. Sometimes they come through friends or acquaintances. “Give me ten thousand dollars and it can become $100,000 within a few weeks!”

Greed is the number-one tool of con artists. If they can build enough greed in people, they can incite them to do just about anything.

But the truth is that very few people will get rich overnight. For the vast majority of us, working faithfully and planning wisely over many years will be how we establish financial security.

How do you strike it rich? According to one financial expert, “spend less than you make, and do it for a long time.”

Long-term faithfulness is God’s way. Do what is right, day in and day out. That’s how you reach success. Just like the overweight person who wants to lose in three weeks the weight they’ve gained over three decades, many of us keep believing in quick methods to financial prosperity.

Diets don’t work that way. Nor do fly-by-night financial schemes.

The answer is to discipline ourselves to live correctly every day. Faithful, proper exercise will result in strength. Faithful, proper eating will bring a trim waistline. And faithful, proper stewardship of our finances—over a long period of time—will bring security and success.

Resolve this year not to gamble on quick solutions to your desires or problems. Along with your spouse, be faithful to obey God’s Word daily.

Obedience to God will bring you what you are looking for—and once you attain it, it will stay with you for the rest of your life.