“Money makes a poor master but a useful servant.”
Thoughts from daily Bible reading for today – August 3, 2026
Your eye is like a lamp that provides light for your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is filled with light. Matthew 6:22, NLT
I like to play a game with our grandchildren by asking them to turn on their Eagle eye. The purpose is to help me find something. For example, during a holiday like the Fourth of July, we will be in the car, and I’ll ask them to help me look for an American flag as we slowly drive through a neighborhood. I’ll say, “Turn on your Eagle eye.” They get excited and love the energy of the search. An eagle, of course, can see much more clearly and farther than humans, with eyesight anywhere from 4 to 8 times better. A golden eagle can soar a couple of miles away and spot a rabbit-sized animal as prey. When Jesus talked about the eye as the light of the body, he described both a healthy and an unhealthy eye. The healthy eye is generous in seeking the ways of the Lord. It allows the light of His love and truth to enter the body, but a bad eye invites the darkness of sin, greed, and selfishness. Healthy eyes have an eye on a generous heart.
The context of this verse is Jesus’ teaching on money. In first-century Jewish speech, “a good eye” (ayin tovah) meant generosity, and “an evil eye” (ayin ra’ah) meant stinginess or covetousness. Jesus’s audience would have recognized this immediately. If your inner orientation is single and undivided, focused on God rather than on accumulating wealth, and generous rather than grasping, your whole life will be filled with light. Conversely, the unhealthy eye is the grasping, covetous eye. It darkens perspective. Generous eyes see the ways of the Spirit revealed.
How do you know whether you love God or money more? Ask yourself whether you worry more about missing your prayer time or your paycheck. Are you more anxious about what the Almighty thinks, or do you obsess over others’ opinions? Are you driven to seek God’s kingdom first or to blindly build your own? Devotion to the eternal or the temporal is a choice. It cannot be to both. One truly captures your worship. Money makes promises it cannot keep, such as security, peace, and prosperity. But the Lord keeps His promises, such as grace, forgiveness, joy, and contentment. When the commands of these two contradict, will you follow Christ or cash? Decide now, so that when you are in the heat of the moment, you do not give in to glittering gold.
What keeps you up at night? Is it how to make more money or how to make more of Jesus? Set your affections above, and you will be more effective below. The Lord is looking for His children to whom He can entrust more of His blessings. He longs for the faithful who use their finances to draw lost souls to salvation, to bring hurting people to healing, and who boldly pray, “Your kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Perhaps you take your family on a mission trip to see how the masses live with little money yet with a lot of the Lord. It is revolutionary for a soul seduced by the mistress of money to see believers without stuff affectionately embrace their Lord and Savior Jesus. Expose your faith to serving the poor, and you will be liberated from self.
This is a heart issue. Who captures your affections: your Savior or your stuff? Money makes a poor master but a useful servant. Jesus is the trustworthy Master in whom you can place your faith and devotion. Money tries to maneuver itself into a position of priority, but by faith you can relegate it to serve righteous causes. Love Jesus, not money. I’ll leave you with Randy Alcorn’s wisdom: “You can’t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead.”
“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).
Prayer
Heavenly Father, give me a single eye fixed on You. Free my heart from love of money, fill it with generosity. May my treasure rest in heaven, my devotion undivided. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Application
Examine one stingy area; give there generously today. Notice if your worries center on Christ or cash. Channel time, money, and attention toward eternal kingdom investments that draw souls home.
Related Reading
Malachi 3:8–10; Matthew 6:10; Colossians 3:1–10; 1Timothy 6:6–10
Worship Resource
Franni Cash: Jesus All Along
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