A 2007 survey of 5500 Australians aged 14 to 30 reveals: “They have greater disdain for advertising, yet are brand conscious and many actually like living with their parents. This allows them to have the best of both worlds.” … “They clearly like to spend money on the latest gadgets, going out and new clothes, but their spending is tempered by concerns over home ownership.”

The survey indicates many young Australians are concerned about the future while enjoying life’s comforts.

But what if you could have everything you ever wanted? What would you experience?

Ecclesiastes chapter six describes a man “to whom God gives wealth, possessions, and honor, so that he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them…”

You could have everything you want, but God is the one who gives the experience of enjoyment. How does God not authorize someone to enjoy what he / she has obtained or accomplished? Here are several specific ways your stuff can lose its enjoyment value, through:

• increased responsibility or cost
  Ecclesiastes 5:11: “when goods increase, they increase who eat them”
• trouble
  Proverbs 15:16: Better is a little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble with it.”
• anxiety or desires concerning needs / wants
  Matthew 6:25; James 4:1-2
• mental affliction
  Daniel 4: story of proud king Nebuchadnezzar and his humiliation
• contemplation
  Ecclesiastes teaches sobering realities, ie your short lifespan, the emptiness of life, and the transience of popularity

Ultimately, the reason money isn’t everything is because God is everything! Any joy in your life comes from him. So money is not the end. God gives wealth (and takes it away) as a means to his end: so that we will realize that only God is worthy to be worshiped. Only God—not your career achievements, your “image,” nor your stuff.

The more we discover who God is and what he has done, we find joy and passion and satisfaction which our things have never been able to provide. “You make known to me the path of life; in Your presence there is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11)