LifeLink Devotions for Tuesday, June 4, 2024

There’s one more principle for financial integrity, and it may be the most difficult to live by. It’s found in Proverbs11:18. “The wicked man earns deceptive wages, but he who sows righteousness reaps a sure reward.”

We are to be honest wage earners.

Back on November 05, 2004, I wrote this challenge about financial integrity with regard to wage earning. It bears repeating.

“It seems like a no-brainer to most of us: don’t steal what belongs to someone else. But let’s define what it is that belongs to someone else. The obvious things are tangible- clothing, cars, boats, household goods, etc. Where it gets tough is when we think about the intangible things, i.e. TIME.”

For example, let’s say your boss hires you for an 8-hour day, with two fifteen-minute paid breaks and a one-hour non-paid lunch break. You will be paid $18.00 per hour. You arrive for work at 8:00 AM, and during the next two hours you work hard. You take your first 15-minute break. At 10:25, you finally arrive back at your desk 10 minutes late and work until noon, except for a ten-minute bathroom break which you didn’t do on your paid break. You leave for lunch at noon and return to your desk at 1:10 PM, and refreshed from your lunch break you put in two solid hours of work. At 3:10 you leave for a break and arrive back at your desk at 3:30 PM. During the next 90 minutes you again take five minutes to go to the bathroom, plus spend ten minutes reprogramming a couple of phone numbers on your personal cell phone. You then check out at 5:00 PM to go home.

Question – How much should you be paid?  If you said $144.00, you are guilty of stealing. You did not work 8 hours: you actually worked only 7 hours and 10 minutes. Now, that may sound picky and insignificant, but that $15 you just stole from your employer by making him pay you for personal time adds up to $75 per week, or $3900.00 per year. It is significant, not just from a cost of business perspective, but from a personal integrity perspective.

How much integrity in our finances is enough? Of all the people in the world, Christians should be the best to deal with when it comes to business and financial transactions. Unfortunately, that is not the case most of the time. For some reason Christians can be the most demanding and obnoxious of all people when it comes to money. Maybe it’s because we have put our trust in the deal or the money with which we make the deal rather than in the God who will provide for us richly when we are honest. Let’s consider all of this carefully today.

Pastor John