We should remember Christ's words, 'Let nothing be wasted,' when we look in our refrigerators and garbage cans and garages.

Wealth is a relational barrier. It keeps us from having open relationships.

Some take pains to be biblical, but many [Christian financial teachers, writers, investment counselors, and seminar leaders] simply parrot their secular colleagues. Other than beginning and ending with prayer, mentioning Christ, and sprinkling in some Bible verses, there's no fundamental difference. They reinforce people's materialist attitudes and lifestyles. They suggest a variety of profitable plans in which people can spend or stockpile the bulk of their resources. In short, to borrow a term from Jesus, some Christian financial experts are helping people to be the most successful 'rich fools' they can be.

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.

Unless we learn how to humbly tell each other our giving stories, our churches will not learn to give.

Whenever we have excess, giving should be our natural response. It should be the automatic decision, the obvious thing to do in light of Scripture and human need.