Money—it seems to be on everyone’s mind these days. Wealth and riches can get our attention like nothing else can. God knows how much we need it for everyday life, and He promises to supply what we need; however, it can have a spirit on it that can steal away our trust in God to keep His Word concerning our finances. Without spiritual discernment when it comes to our finances, we can find ourselves in financial bondage serving the spirit of mammon.  

Mammon Wants Us to Serve It, Not God

Money is neither good nor bad; it’s just a tool to accomplish an end. What inspires greed in people is the spirit of mammon that wants to attach itself to our money. Mammon is the name of the Syrian god of riches, and it tells people to love money more than God. Mammon always contradicts God’s Word.

The world gives money top priority, but in the kingdom of God—which operates completely opposite from the world—it is the least important thing. During His ministry, Jesus warned the people about mammon’s influence. “He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who shall give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Luke 16:10-13). We therefore must choose who to serve.

God Warns Us About the Influence of Mammon

Jesus had plenty to say about money; He made reference to mammon four times in the New Testament. The spirit of mammon governs money, and many of us don’t even realize how it influences much of what we do. It produces doublemindedness in us and leads us into worshipping material possessions. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways” (James 1:8). This spirit also makes us stingy and unwilling to give financially.

Mammon is sneaky. It will have us try to manage our resources but will end up enslaving us; this is called being in debt. An example of this is trying to rent furniture, appliances, and everything in between. Throw in monthly rent, car payments, layaway, and credit card debt, and you really are in bondage. Debt is mammon-driven. 

This is the natural way of trying to manage money; however, believers aren’t living in the natural, but the supernatural. When we can no longer manage money because money is managing us, we need supernatural help to be delivered from debt. We can do this because we’re not children of the natural, but children of the supernatural. “So, dear brothers and sisters, we are not children of the slave woman; we are children of the free woman” (Galatians 4:31, NLT).

Supernatural Deliverance from Debt Is Available

Functioning in the supernatural means that we’re not limited by natural resources. In the Old Testament, when a son of the prophet was chopping wood and lost a borrowed axe head in the water, Elisha made it resurface and swim so that the man could retrieve it (2 Kings 6:5-7). This saved the man from being in debt until he worked long enough to earn the money to replace the axe. In this situation, God released supernatural means just to get one man out of debt; He’ll do the same for us.

Debt is something that the unsaved external environment just accepts. However, it’s spiritually dangerous to become accustomed to it. “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7). Mammon gladly would have us borrow and be enslaved to credit cards and car loan repayments. The thought of saving the money and buying with cash would never cross our minds.  

God Can, and Will, Free Us from Debt

God does not want us drowning in financial debt; the only debt we should have is the debt of love we owe one another, according to His law of love. He’s very clear on this. “Keep out of debt and owe no man anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor [who practices loving others] has fulfilled the Law [relating to one’s fellowmen, meeting all its requirements” (Romans 13:8, AMPC). God wants us to be blessed so that we can be a blessing to others; debt keeps us from accomplishing this. We must declare war on the spirit of debt.

God has a specific plan to get us debt-free and it’s essential we follow it. We need to visualize ourselves reaching that point, then formulate a strategy to move toward it. Paying off the smaller debts first and then applying the extra money left over to pay progressively larger debts has a snowball effect of moving us out of debt one baby step at a time. We need to refrain from using credit cards while we’re doing this.

Financial Miracles Are One of God’s Specialties

When we’re in debt, mammon tells us that it’s better just to give up and quit instead of moving forward. That’s when depression comes in. Most of us have been in some kind of financial situation before, but we’ve also experienced financial miracles; we can have faith that if God came through for us once, He’ll do it again.

We can take a lesson from Isaac, who sowed even in the midst of a famine in the land. “Then Isaac sowed in that land, and received in the same year an hundredfold: and the Lord blessed him. And the man waxed great, and went forward, and grew until he became very great” (Genesis 26:12, 13). Sowing is God’s way of bringing us into abundance, but mammon tries to stop us from giving. Having the discernment to take supernatural steps allows God to deliver us financially. When we’re experiencing a drought in our financial lives, we can rely on God to end it.