Where is your heart?

I have been sitting here at the computer getting our next Financial Peace University class registered online. Then I was putting an announcement in the bulletin for it and it got me thinking. We've been having a hard time getting people from our congregation to want to come to the classes and I have been wondering why. Have you noticed how people don't like to talk about money? Even more so in the church. It's like it's this big no no to talk about it. Seriously though. How often do we here preachers talk about money? When they do talk about it, it is always about giving. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about giving to the church. It just seems to me that we need to start teaching more about money in general. How to be better stewards of it so we can give more. God has blessed all of us so richly and I believe that it is our responsibility to manage what God has given us. Did you know that money is one of the most talked about subjects in the Bible. Why do you think that is? Over 800 scriptures in the Bible talk about money. God must think it is really important if it is in there so often. Scriptures about giving, getting out of debt, investing, saving, spending. The list goes on. Why is it that the only scripture that we can think of is "Money is the root of all evil." Oh wait, is that not how it goes. Because I think that is what we have been taught. That money is EVIL. So we Christians are suppose to just stay poor and let all the bad people of the world have all the money. I see something really wrong with that picture. No where in scripture does it say that money is evil. No where does it say that we can't have a lot of it. I believe what the scripture says in I Tim. 6:10 "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil." Did you here that? The LOVE OF MONEY is the root of all evil. Not money. It's your heart! Money itself is not good or bad. It is the persons heart that determines what the money will do. You can choose to use it for evil or you can choose to use it for good. So we need to start learning more about how to manage what God has given us and give more in return. In our FPU classes we talk about how managing money is 20% head knowledge and 80% behavior. It is one thing knowing what to do with money. It's a whole different ball game actually doing it. If your heart is not in the right place, then your money wont be either.