There is an interesting parable that Jesus told in Luke 12. It reads,
"13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.”
16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’
18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
You might be thinking that God was kind of harsh to the man, but remember, this is a parable. It didn't actually happen; this story is just being told so we can take a lesson away from it.
So, what is the lesson? Well, it kind of tells us in verse 21, when it says that that is what will happen to us, if we store things for ourselves instead of for God. But how do we "be rich toward God?" When Jesus tells us that, he doesn't actually want us to physically give God money. After all, God doesn't even use money. But to use our money and riches for Him.
The fool in this parable was blessed by God when he received a bountiful harvest. But instead of using this blessing to glorify God, the fool just stored it up for himself so he could have an easy life. Our purpose on this earth is to honor God, but this fool didn't do that and he payed for that.
Something that's also interesting is in verse 20. This verse says, "But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?" I think that is an awesome point. Who gets all the stuff we have after we die? When our time has come all of our things and possessions will just go to waste. We'll either be in heaven or hell and we won't care about all the time and money we spent on our stuff. After we die all our stuff is useless.
We should use our talents and possessions to glorify God. After all, when we die it'll be useless to us anyway so why don't we use it to help others?
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