Becoming a new person in Christ is part of a life-long journey that
begins at conversion. Before coming to Christ, we were living (in a
metaphorical sense) in Egypt, in the land of bondage. Just as the people
of Israel toiled as slaves in Egypt, we were slaves to sin and worldly
ambition.
Before we came to Christ, we sweated and toiled to build our career and
acquire material possessions. Work was our idol. Greed was our
taskmaster. We may have had all the trappings of power in the business
world - a corner office, a staff of our own, a key to the executive
washroom - but we were living as a slave in the land of Egypt. We didn't
run our career; our career ran us.
Jesus once said, "No servant can serve two masters. You cannot serve
both God and money" (Luke 16:13). In the original language, the word
translated "money" was an Aramaic word, Mammon. This does not refer
merely to money as a medium of exchange but also to a demonic spirit
designed to promote a mind-set of ambition for riches, power and worldly
gain. The word is capitalized in the original text because the people
of Jesus' day thought of Mammon as a false god. Jesus was saying that
those who spend their lives seeking worldly gain are idolaters. No one
can serve two masters. No one can worship both the true God and a false
god.
We cannot experience the grace that God gives to His children because we
are too busy striving for riches and enslaved to Mammon. The only way
we can be free is to turn away from Mammon and allow the one true God to
transform us into a different person.
Ask yourself today if your life is best represented as Egypt or the Promised Land.
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