Building Wealth for Building the Kingdom by Devin D. Thorpe , -Excerpt-

Introduction

But before ye seek for riches, seek ye for the kingdom of God.

And after ye have obtained a hope in Christ ye shall obtain riches, if ye seek them; and ye will seek them for the intent to do good—to clothe the naked, and to feed the hungry, and to liberate the captive, and administer relief to the sick and the afflicted.

- Jacob 2:18-19

LDS Motivation

This book has been written for those Latter-Day Saints (members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) who believe that it is more important to do good than to do well.  That is to say, it is written for you because you believe it is more important to raise a good family, attend to your Church duties, send your children on missions and pay tithing than it is for you to accumulate wealth.  You may, therefore, lack adequate financial planning.  The objective of this book is to help you to prepare financially to render any service that you may be called to give.

Brigham Young best expressed what has become the theme for this book.  He said, “If, by industrious habits and honorable dealings, you obtain thousands or millions, little or much, it is your duty to use all that is put in your possession, as judiciously as you have knowledge, to build up the Kingdom of God on the earth.”

What Brigham Young suggests is something akin to consecration.  The Church does not now require that we currently share all of our wealth directly with the Church or that we keep all things in common.  Instead, we live a preparatory law of tithing and the payment of offerings.  Beyond that, we give to the Church much of our free time.   We save and invest our money to prepare our children to enter life as contributing members of the Church.  We save and invest to send our children on missions and to serve missions ourselves.

This preparatory law is good preparation for living the higher law.  So much of our time, talents and resources are already dedicated directly to building the kingdom that to go to the next step of fully consecrating our assets and income to the Lord should become relatively simple.  It is not inappropriate to consider financial planning from the standpoint of preparing ourselves for living this higher law.