Time & Perspective Quote by David Wilkerson

Wilkerson draws a careful line that many preachers skip: he refuses the easy villainy of money itself, then turns the blade toward the far less defensible target - our attention. “Riches…are not evil in themselves” is a disarming concession, a way to pre-empt the listener’s internal rebuttal (“But I have bills, kids, responsibilities”) and to acknowledge the gritty normalcy of “cares and troubles.” He’s not asking for poverty cosplay. He’s asking for an audit.

The operative word is “expense.” Wilkerson frames spiritual drift not as rebellion but as budget mismanagement: time and energy get spent, and something else gets underfunded. That metaphor matters because it locates sin in the ordinary habits that feel morally neutral - overtime hours, hustling, worry-as-planning, the quiet pride of being “responsible.” In other words, the danger isn’t the paycheck; it’s the way pursuing security can become a rival devotion that slowly crowds out Christ without ever announcing itself as idolatry.

Context sharpens the intent. Wilkerson, known for street-level ministry and later for warning against complacent, consumer-friendly Christianity, is speaking to believers in a late-20th-century American economy where comfort is attainable but never quite feels secure. The quote reads like an anti-prosperity sermon without sounding like an anti-work rant. Its subtext is pastoral and confrontational: you can keep your life, your career, your necessities - but you can’t pretend the chase is spiritually free. The question isn’t “Do you have things?” It’s “What do your things have of you?”