Audit Your Trust Fund
For those of you who may be unaware, I am a recovering trained accountant. While it has been over 20 years since I did any sort of accounting-related work for pay, I must say that mindset is still a large part of who I am, and it pops up in some very seemingly unrelated circumstances, especially in the life of being a pastor. And, no, I’m not speaking of the administrative side of pastoral ministry - although it is definitely been an asset in that aspect.
One of my favorite classes in my undergrad days was the first audit class. While it was not my best class, it definitely was fascinating because we learned how to look at someone else’s work and see what did not seem to add up. It was neat to look at an entity’s books from an outsider’s view, and from 30,000 feet. Sometimes it was when we looked at the whole that what was previously unremarkable stood out like a sore thumb.
I thought of the practice of auditing when looking at today’s scriptures, because today’s lesson from the Proverbs talks bluntly about what are the fruits of our efforts. In a time where pretty much every aspect of our lives has been transformed, what better time is there for us to step back and take a big-picture view of life…we might have the joy of discovering how much we do, indeed, rely on God’s grace, or we might have the joy of discovering that if we are in a season where we are not so faithful to God we serve a risen savior who offers us grace, peace, reconciliation, redemption, restoration, and wholeness no matter the situation in which we may find ourselves. Before we get too much further into this, let us encounter a few words from Proverbs 11:28-30…
Those who trust in their riches will wither, but the righteous will flourish like green leaves. Those who trouble their households will inherit wind, and the fool will be servant to the wise. The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, but violence takes lives away.
Remembering that ours is a loving God whose sole desire is that all of creation be reconciled with its creator, these verses offer us the great opportunity to ask ourselves in where does our trust lie. This passage does, if you will, invite the reader or hearer of these words to do an audit of their lives to get a true picture of the state of their faithfulness to God’s will. Just a few questions to ask as we dive into this task:
Where does our ultimate trust lie - our bank accounts or an empty tomb?
Are we flourishing because we have discovered true righteousness comes solely through the grace of God in Christ?
Do we trouble our households, or do we bring a spirit of life and peace?
The fruits that manifest themselves in the life we lead - do they bring light and life to all we encounter?
The beautiful thing about a well-planned and well-executed audit is not that it gives us a particular outcome; the beautiful thing about a well-planned and well-executed audit is that it brings us to see some truth that we might miss when we are in the middle of all the things of life.
While the term, ‘audit,’ strikes fear in the heart of so many, let us not forget that an audit of anything might also help you discover things that are going well; given the natural human tendency to blow past the positive, maybe, just maybe an audit of the self is needed so we can be reminded not only of our desperate need for divine grace in Christ but also be reminded that our lives bear witness to the fact we have received more of God’s grace than we could possibly have imagined and most definitely do not deserve.
Grace & Peace,
Lamar