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The Upside Down World, Week 1, Day 7

by David Joynt on September 16, 2017


 

MATTHEW 13:22

 

The “selling all” pattern can be over-spiritualized. It doesn’t refer in a simplistic way to you and I just getting rid of all material possessions, since this one-time action would create dependence and complicate our lives and ministries. But the spiritual dangers of affluenza are in view in many places in the gospels. Illustrations are the rich young ruler in Matthew 19, the lessons on anxiety in Matthew 6, and the realistic way that Jesus describes the gospel being choked by “worldly desires and a love of riches” in Matthew 13. Material possessions can never satisfy us, but they can get in the way of us valuing Christ above all else.

 

 

How does affluenza appear in your life?

  

FAMILY TIME—

Why do people want to be rich?

Should we want to be rich?

 

Tags: rich, affluenza

About the Author
David Joynt

Dave Joynt began his service as a pastor at Valley Presbyterian Church in Paradise Valley, Arizona in September 2014. This meant a move away from the Northeast, where he has a long history, growing up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and then serving congregations in Delaware and New Jersey for a total of 23 years.

Dave was nurtured in a great church in Bethlehem where his parents, Anne and Carey, served as elders. He graduated in classics from Lehigh University where his Father taught, and then from Oxford, where he met his wife Julia. Ordained in 1988, he completed a Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1993.

He and Julia have a son, Tristan, and a daughter, Madeleine.

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