Bible Text: 1 Timothy 6:7 | Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. 1 Timothy 6:7

Pain, prosperity, and power have far more in common than the fact that in the English language these three words all begin with the letter P. Like a catalyst in a laboratory which precipitates chemical changes in a given substance, these three change individuals who have to cope with them. In a real sense, they are like paint or varnish remover of the soul that reveals the true character of a person.

Pain, for example, has been with us from the day that Cain struck his brother and killed him, but the physical pain was quickly followed by emotional pain as our first father and mother saw their lives torn apart, knowing not only that they had lost a son, but their remaining son was a murderer.

C. S. Lewis, a Christian apologist, thought of pain as God’s megaphone–it gets your attention as few things in all of life. Some think of the absence of pain as God’s gift of grace; others experience the true grace of God in times of severe pain in ways that they would never have known it.

Why some suffer and why some are exempted generally has nothing to do with either your sinfulness or your righteousness, though—let’s face it—bad choices, including acts of our sinful rebellion against God and what He wills for us, do produce suffering and pain. Paul, a man mightily used by God, cried out to God on three separate occasions, asking him to bring healing to his body. Instead he found God’s grace, learning that in his human weakness there is God’s great strength.

Poverty and prosperity are neither a reward nor a curse, but both have a way of changing people. They reduce us to stark nakedness, or else put within our grasp the potential for great good.

Both, however, are catalysts that change us for better or for worse. “Though your riches increase,” said the psalmist, “do not set your heart on them” (Psalm 62:10). Why? Because money is sinful? No, though some would answer in the affirmative, thinking you can’t be honest and yet successful. But the reality is that wealth is simply a stewardship that can turn your heart from what is important, forgetting that we brought nothing into the world and we shall take nothing out.

There is another catalyst in life and it is the power that comes through success or prominence. Strange, this one, in that some rise through the ranks unaffected by their importance. True, they are busy and bear greater responsibility, but they are unaffected by what they have done. They still put their pants on one leg at a time and ate just one meal at a time, long before they were rich, famous, or powerful.

Others, inflated with their own accomplishments, are looking for a vacancy in the Trinity, or lacking that, have set themselves apart from the rest of the world in a class reserved only for a few.

What’s the difference in all of this? Not what you seem externally, how you act, what you wear, or the restaurants you may eat at—whether it’s a few sticks of satay at a roadside stall or at the finest restaurant in your city. It’s what’s within—your integrity, the real you.

Realizing that we are but dust and will someday leave behind what we have accumulated is sobering but necessary. Paul’s reminder to Timothy is sobering: “For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it” (1Timothy 6:7). No wonder Paul instructed us to lay up our treasure where no identity theft can rob you, and where it will never depreciate, and where you get exactly what you deserve. Think about it.

Resource reading: 1Timothy 6