Quotes about Possessions

As base a thing as money often is, yet it can be transmuted into everlasting treasure. It can be converted into food for the hungry and clothing for the poor. Any temporal possession can be turned into everlasting wealth. Whatever is given to Christ is immediately touched with immortality.

What is it to be rich toward God? To understand this, imagine for a moment everything you call yours in the world as taken from you. Picture yourself abandoned and forgotten of all, in utter isolation alone with your own heart. And then ask yourself: What have I now? What do I now possess?

We should never let material things get ahead of God or become so important in our lives that we can't walk away from them if He tells us to. Anything you own that has a hold on you is a problem.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

Giving up everything must mean giving over everything to kingdom purposes, surrendering everything to further the one central cause, loosening our grip on everything. For some of us, this may mean ridding ourselves of most of our possessions. But for all of us it should mean dedicating everything we retain to further the kingdom. (For true disciples, however, it cannot mean hoarding or using kingdom assets self-indulgently.)

The principle is timeless: If Christ is not Lord over our money and possessions, he is not our Lord.

Ever seen that bumper sticker "He who dies with the most toys wins"? Millions of people act as if it were true. The more accurate saying is "He who dies with the most toys still dies—and never takes his toys with him." When we die after devoting our lives to acquiring things, we don't win—we lose. We move into eternity, but our toys stay behind, filling junkyards. The bumper sticker couldn't be more wrong.

Every item I add to my possessions is one more thing to think about, talk about, clean, repair, display, rearrange, and replace when it goes bad.

There is a powerful relationship between our true spiritual condition and our attitude and actions concerning money and possessions.

If Christ is not Lord over our money and possessions, he is not our Lord.

If we were to gain God's perspective, even for a moment, and were to look at the way we go through life accumulating and hoarding and displaying our things, we would have the same feelings of horror and pity that any sane person has when he views people in an asylum endlessly beating their heads against the wall.

A man's contentment is in his mind, not in the extent of his possessions. Alexander the Great, with all the world at his feet, cries for another world to conquer.