What's Your Net Worth?

Not too long ago, I attended a special seminar on retirement planning. One of the exercises was to calculate my net worth. In simple terms, I added up the dollar value of everything I own, and then subtracted the amount of money I owe. The result wasn’t pretty. In fact, it was downright negative. I mean, literally in the negative! I owed more to others than what I owned. That meant even if I sold everything I had, it wouldn’t be enough to pay my debts.

Perhaps you’re in a similar situation. Recent statistics put family credit card debt averages at $8000. Even more disturbing, 36% of those who owed $10,000 or more on their credit cards earned less than $50,000 per year. That kind of debt is nearly impossible to pay off – which is why bankruptcy filings continue to rise.

Those of us who work for a living aren’t doing a very good job of saving for the days when we are no longer working. More than half of all employees in the US have less than $25,000 in total savings and investments. Count me in that half.

All this money stuff gives me a headache. When I look at where I am financially compared to where society tells me I ought to be, I get depressed. I’m simply not worth very much in the world’s eyes. Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley don’t come knocking on my door. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Michael Dell don’t return my phone calls.

Every day we are bombarded with dual messages: you’re not good enough; but buy this or that and you’ll be better. Drug companies tell us we need their pills. Car companies tell us we need their cars. Beer and soda companies tell us we need to drink their products. Even churches have gotten into the advertising action. Come to OUR church and you’ll feel LOTS better!

The simple truth is that all the advertising messages we receive fall short of the truth – even the church ones. That’s because we cannot become good enough no matter what we do, or what we buy, or where we go to church. I’ve heard some people say that the denomination one attends is determined by economics. Poorer people tend to be Pentecostal or Church of God. Middle class people tend to be Baptist or Methodist. Richer people tend to be Lutheran, Presbyterian or Episcopalian. As if God designed churches based on net incomes. YUCK!

My net worth may not be much in the world’s eyes, and my church may not be one where lots of rich people attend, but I know that in God’s eyes – we are worth so much!! And so are you!! God doesn’t look at our checkbooks before deciding whether or not to care about us. God doesn’t care whether our cash value is negative or positive. Whether we’re in debt to our eyeballs or overflowing with cash, God sees us as who God made us to be. And God also sees how short we fall from what we were made to be.

The real net worth that God cares about is how much progress we’ve made through Him to become what we were made to be. Each day is a new deposit from God to you – to be invested in become more forgiving, more discerning, more generous. The bottom line in God’s eyes: how much are you becoming like Jesus Christ?

Jesus tells a parable to Peter in Matthew 18:21-35 about the servant who owed the king a tremendous, un-payable debt. The servant begged the king for more time to pay. The king, knowing full well the servant could never pay the debt, nevertheless cancelled the debt and sent the servant away as a free man. The servant, however, went and grabbed a fellow servant by the throat and demanded instant payment on a paltry debt. The second servant didn’t have the money to pay back the debt and so begged for more time to pay (just what the first servant had done with the king). But the first servant wasn’t as forgiving as the king – he sent his fellow servant to debtor’s prison.

Even though the first servant had an instant financial windfall from the king’s forgiveness, he had no net value in the king’s eyes. When the king heard about how the servant had treated his fellow servant, the debt was reinstated and the servant was sent away for forever – to pay a debt he could never repay.

Your net worth and mine should be based on God’s economy: how much can you forgive and give away? Not how much can you gain. We all fall short, but God forgives and restores us when we come to Him. I pray that you become wealthy by God’s standards!!