Set Apart: Money

I’m in the process of reading a new book that I’m extremely excited about. “Set Apart: Calling a Worldly Church to a Godly Life” by Kent Hughes. Kent Hughes has been one of my favorite authors since I was “made” by Michael Whitt (my former pastor who taught me more than college did) to read “Disciplines of a Godly Man”.


The 2nd Chapter was all about materialism. The whole concept of the book is how we as believers should be separated in every aspect of our lives from the world… we are called to live holy, yet our materialistic lives are no different than the consumer driven lives of lost people. John Stott said this, “Our blindness to materialism is similar to the western culture’s blindness to the sins of slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today we look back in amazement that Christian people could not see it for the evil that it was. And likely, future generations will regard our day with the same perplexity: How could they not have seen it?” Wow, how blind are we to our deep sins of materialistic idolatry??

“Setting ourselves apart from materialism has everything to do with the spread of the Gospel among the Nations. We cannot be like the nations and at the same time a light to the nations. A worldly church will not reach the world. If we live for the things of Sodom, how will we point others to the hill of Salvation”, says Hughes. We must, as redeemed believers, separate ourselves from the constant struggle to obtain more for ourselves. This has been one of the most convicting chapters of any book I have ever read. My desire is to be separated, but my desire to have “stuff” is blending me into a world that needs Jesus.


As I pray for Christ to bring freedom in my life, you to search your heart and see if you struggle with the sins of covetousness, materialistic idolatry, or lack of faith in God to take care of you. We are called to be set apart, and I believe one of the best ways to make our separation visible is to invest in eternal things where rust and moth cannot destroy.

I’ll leave you with some of the best advice I’ve ever read concerning how to treat money in your lives: “Money may be temporarily under my control. But I must always regard it as a wild beast, with power to turn on me and others if I drop my guard.”—Randy Alcorn