Do You Worship Your Next Paycheck?

We worship what we fear.

If it’s God, that’s a good thing. He should be feared. He’s God.

But my own faith journey has forced me to ask myself a question that may be helpful for you.

Do you worship your next paycheck?

Think about this statement: “I don’t know where my next paycheck is coming from.” Does it strike fear into your soul? Pity? Or joy at the possibility of an amazing opportunity?

I found myself making that statement to myself a year ago, because, candidly, there was no next paycheck. I had discovered what Shakespeare and most people would call “the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns….” Some of you — maybe all of you at some point — have been there before. In this period of sustained economic recession, you might even be there now.

But what if God called you to walk away from your next payckeck or to accept a significantly smaller one to further His Kingdom purposes? Would you be OK with that?

The Pink Slip on the Damascus Road

Consider the example of Paul, or Saul, as he was called at the time. God broke into his comfortable world on the road to Damascus. “Saul, whoever or whatever you think you’re worshiping, it’s not me.”

In a moment, Paul lost everything he had known — everything he had devoted himself to worship — including his next paycheck. But what a story he was freed to tell! The kind of story that turns the world upside down. (Acts 22) Now that’s a story worth giving up a paycheck for, a story worth telling.

When Faith Calls Us to Choose

Steven Pressfield says that reality and humility are two of the most powerful forces we can face. But they’re gifts, really. When we come to terms with the reality of our desperate place before God and reach a place of humility where we can say, “Not my will, but thine be done” — look out. All that is lacking then is the will to move forward in answer to the call, even if that means leaving the paycheck we once worshiped behind.

It’s one thing to say you will walk by faith when you’re pretty certain the next paycheck is coming. When you know it’s not, you come face-to-face with what you fear — and what you worship. You must choose.

No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. (Matthew 6:24)

It is in the middle of great uncertainty that we can finally get clarity on the One who is our true security:

Most of us will have no idea where we are going most of the time. And I know that is unsettling. But circumstantial uncertainty also goes by another name: Adventure. ~ Mark Batterson

What about you? If you didn’t care about your next paycheck, what would you be free to do? Listen closely to the answer you give to that question. Maybe it’s God speaking through the fog of the ordinary to call you to something extraordinary.

What about you? What would you be free to do if you no longer feared losing your next paycheck? Share your thoughts with a comment below.