What would you do with the sudden windfall of a few hundred million dollars?  I’m sure the thought has crossed your mind.    Assuming you won the Powerball last week, some of these things have happened already:

  1. You secured an attorney.
  2. You saw a financial planner.
  3. You quit your job.
  4. You received phone calls from relatives you’ve never met.
  5. You changed your phone number.
  6. You paid all your debts off.
  7. You bought everything in your Amazon wish list by hitting “Select All” and then “Purchase.”

That’s just week one.

Few of us understand how much things can change with sudden wealth.  We think life will be the same, only better.  But not by a long shot.  Too many true life cases tell a different story of divorces, suicides, murder, bankruptcy, estranged families, and lawsuits.

And so the biblical wisdom of Proverbs says,

30:8 Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,

9 lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the Lord?”

According to those verses, fullness doesn’t lead to thanks and praise.  It often leads to denial of God’s rights over our lives, and forgetfulness of Him.  

Human beings love wealth because it empowers us to live outside our former limitations.  Enormous bank accounts can enable our sin nature to operate at full capacity.  One lotto winner went broke on cocaine and hookers alone—fourteen million dollars down the drain on girls named “Trixie” and “Suga.”  What kind of fun will that amount of money buy?  Some pretty dark stuff, I’m sure.

Even if you disciplined yourself to avoid becoming an immoral louse, there’s still the issue of distractions.  Now you can afford plenty of big boy toys—boats and houses, cars and vacations.  With all this excitement and redirected focus, you’re bound to discover your heart is only so big.  And there are only so many hours in a day.

You used to pray for daily bread.  Remember when you pleaded with God that you wouldn’t get laid off?  On disappointing days, the Scriptures assured you that real satisfaction can only be found in Christ, and at the end of this fractured life a better world awaited you.

But now, post-lotto, things are different.  You can start the day out on the lake, in the stores, on the plane.  If your devotional time with Jesus has survived at all, it’s in the form of a surface reading, a quickie prayer, a nod to Him.   Passion and urgency are gone.  Temporal joys now beckon.

That wouldn’t be me, you think.

I hope it wouldn’t be me, either.

In case of a fiscal tidal wave, we hope that our nobler nature would prevail.  Aside from splurging on that vintage corvette, and house on a private Pacific beach, we’d want to be philanthropic.  Mark Zuckerberg recently disclosed that he would give away 99% of his Facebook shares to charity—some $45 billion.  Yes, you say.  I know of a church or a cause I too would generously support.

Yet, Zuckerberg didn’t win his money with a ticket bought at the corner convenience store.  He earned it.  Self-made wealthy people have spent years of hard work accumulating their fortunes.  They’ve also developed the conservative character that it takes to manage it.  

During my research of lotto winner stories, I noticed some who turned to responsible forms of generosity.  Just as many though, went on wild sprees, like the New Jersey woman who gambled away two lotto prizes, and now lives in a trailer home on food stamps.

Alas, sometimes we know how to deal with $6.00 an hour at Denney’s, but not $5.4 million in sudden cash.  Money can easily outstrip skill, character, and common sense.  People who think they’d act a certain way if instantly enriched, often don’t get around to it when such a magical thing happens.

Prudent character or not, the rich still face grave obstacles of their own when it comes to entering eternity.  Jesus said, “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (Luke 18:24).

Those who are wealthy always face challenges concerning whom they will obey: “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Mt. 6:24).

So, if you win the lotto, or suddenly and unexpectedly inherit a vast fortune from a distant cousin, you have your work cut out for you.

However, Proverbs 30:18 seeks to steer us away from both riches and poverty.  It says, “give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me” 

Financial lack tests human beings as surely as wealth.  It can lead us to compromise in doing things we know are wrong for the sake of making up our deficit (i.e. stealing, or accepting ungodly occupations).  The honest person who struggles to earn a living with integrity, might also tire of the relentless grind.    Weary of hardship, he or she might be drawn into resentment, seeing God as absentee or unloving.    

Thus, Agur (the writer of the Proverb) understands the temptations of both heady abundance and the bitterness of lack, and prays for “Neither this nor that.  Just give me what I need.”  The Apostle Paul famously phrased it this way:

“I have learned, in whatever situation I am, to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need” (Phil. 4:11b-12).  

Having made this incredible claim for himself, he then credits Christ as the source of his power— “I can do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil. 4:13).    In a world that encourages excess, and discontentment, only the Lord Himself can bring us into a true experience of sufficiency.

Now that would make an interesting lotto ticket—one that paid a grand prize of “Enough.”