The hatred you feel toward your present poverty is a voice within declaring that you were not made to live by bread alone. Yet you cry, “I need money so badly.” Let me ask you this: what need is truly the most urgent? The body clamors for its bread, but the soul stands in far greater necessity. You are a creature whose breath is in your nostrils, and whose immortal spirit must soon stand before its Maker. Is it not a far sadder thing to be without God, without Christ, without hope, than to be without gold? I do not despise your temporal trial; the Lord knows our frame, and He remembers that we are dust. But I would have you learn, from this pinch of outward need, that you have an inward poverty which no bank can relieve. You are, by nature, a sinner, absolutely bankrupt before the throne of divine justice. You have no money of merit, no price of goodness, no coin of reformation. This is a blessed discovery if it drives you to the place where heaven’s market is held, where the cry goes forth, “He that has no money; come, buy, and eat.”
Mark well that it is to the man without money that the invitation is sent. The old serpents that hawk salvation for a price, they will not cry their wares to you, for they know your purse is empty. They want ready-money customers and plenty of them. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ aims at the penniless, the broken, the forlorn. You are feeling in your pocket and you find nothing there, you do not need anything, salvation is “without money and without price.” You have been feeling in your heart and you find nothing there! Oh, despair not, for this is exactly the condition which qualifies you to receive from the Son of God. When you own you have nothing, then you are nothing, and that is exactly what you must be, for Christ is all.
I know your mind is fixed on the rent and the bread, but let me plead with you to press deeper. He that came from yonder bright world was so poor that He had not where to lay His head. He knows your need of daily bread, but He knows far more your need of His saving blood. Your crying poverty may be the very raven sent to bring you meat from the hand of a providing God. Have you not found that when earthly cisterns run dry, you are driven to the fountain-head? The fat need Jesus as much as the lean, the strong as much as the feeble, for none can keep alive his own soul. And if He sustains the soul, shall He not also clothe the body? You have need of healing, friend, urgent need. And inasmuch as your very anxiety betrays a soul which seeks its rest in visible things, you have great need of healing, urgent need of saving from the sin of unbelief which would whisper that God has forgotten to be gracious.
Come, then, with all your need. He is the very friend you need, a friend in need is a friend indeed. You hate your condition? So hated the publicans their shame, yet they crowded near to Christ. You are broken and begrimed with care? Then draw near to Him who does not wait for the whole, but for the sick. Test Him as often as need arises. Bring your empty purse, your aching heart, your fears for tomorrow, and lay them at the feet which were nailed for you. The Holy Spirit alone can turn this trial into a ladder leading to heaven, where earthly footholds give way. You feel your need of money; oh, may you feel a thousand times more your need of the Spirit of God, whose grace makes poverty rich and transforms a hovel into the vestibule of the palace of the King!