So you've made your Christmas list? Checked it twice? Before we get too carried away dreaming about the CD or Xbox game we've just got to have, let's be thankful for the One gift we already have—the best gift of all.

Actually, God's method of balancing our checkbooks isn't primarily about numbers. It's about attitude.

Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." LUKE 2:19

Heavenly Father, I thank You and praise You for all You have given me. Help me to give back to You with the same heart of praise I have when I receive from You. I want to be a cheerful giver. Help me to never value my possessions more than I value You and Your laws. Enable me to give the way You want me to.

If a person gets his attitude toward money straight, it will help straighten out almost every other area in his life.

The Christian faith has become a cheap faith because we too often live as if it has no value. We complain when the preacher runs over a few minutes on the Sunday sermon and consider it a great inconvenience to return to services once or twice more in the same week. No wonder so much of the world does not consider our faith relevant when we are not even willing to give of our time, much less our freedom or lives, for what we say we believe in.

God does not need our money. He owns everything, including "our" money. What He wants [us] to discover is where our central focus of worship lies. Is that focus on God or our money?

The world thinks peace would come if everyone made a lot of money, but people haven't found peace in possessions. They have thought the world would have peace if all arms were destroyed. Yet Cain killed Abel without a handgun. It is man's heart that is the problem.

Many churches are measuring the wrong things. We measure things like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts. Those things can be counted, but not as easily as offerings.

Our lives are the only meaningful expression of what we believe and in Whom we believe. And the only real wealth, for any of us, lies in our faith.

If today were your last, would you do what you're doing? Or would you love more, give more, forgive more?

We are to enjoy what we have while we have it, but we are never to get to the point where we think we could not love without it.