SermonStudio

Many years ago the founder and president of the National Cash Register Company of Dayton, Ohio, used a similar technique in motivating people. Mr. Patterson would choose some of his up-and-coming young executives and tell them to take their wives to New York City on company expense. He would tell them to stay at the finest hotel in the city and to go to the best restaurants. They were encouraged to go shopping for the wives to buy new clothes or anything else that they might like to have. They were invited to go to a Broadway show while they were in the city. All this would be done at company expense. However, even though the National Cash Register Company would pay for all of this, Mr. Patterson had a reason. Mr. Patterson believed that once his employees and their wives experienced the finer things of life, they would come back wanting to earn more money, which would cause them to work even harder and be of a greater value to the company.

This might work in the business world, but Simon found out that it would never work in the Kingdom of God. "Peter said to him, 'Your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have neither part nor lot in this matter, for your heart is not right before God.'a" God uses a different economy, and it is called grace. Those who have never experienced it will not understand it.


Source: Paul Strodach, Calling All Christians (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press).