“No one can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24).
Picture this: It is almost midnight, and you are lying in bed with your phone about six inches from your face.
You told yourself around 9 o'clock that you were done for the day, so you brushed your teeth. You meant to do your Examen, but somehow your hand picked up your phone instead of your prayer book. Then you told yourself you just had to check something really quick and you’d get back to your night prayers. All this time later, here you are, checking your bank account, your Stripe account, your social media followers, how many likes that post got, recreating that reel that was already done, or answering emails.
Even after three hours of checking, your Stripe account is the same. Nothing sold while you were reading bedtime stories and wiping down the counters, but you check it anyway, because some part of you is sure that if you look just one more time, you will finally feel the thing you have been chasing all day. You think another sale or more money in your account means you’re doing something worthy! In reality, the thing you are chasing is permission to exhale and proof that you are going to be okay. Whether you hit the “number” or not, tomorrow you will wake up and reach for it again before you have reached for anything or anyone else.
What Jesus actually said
Jesus put it as plainly as He ever put anything: you cannot serve God and mammon (Matthew 6:24) and He pleaded with us to stop being so anxious about our lives, to quit lying awake running the numbers on what we'll eat and what we'll wear, because the Father already knows we need every bit of it. Seek first the Kingdom of God, He says, and all the rest will be added to you besides (Matt 6:33).
(This teaching isn't only in the Gospel. Once you start looking, the same lesson is taught throughout the Bible: It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes; The angel of the Lord sets up camp around those who fear Him, so taste and see that the Lord is good; Do not be anxious; You are surrounded and protected; Seek first the Kingdom.)
When you first read that you cannot serve God and mammon, you may assume mammon means money. So you interpret that as "don't be greedy," and move right along – because we do not think of ourselves as greedy.
As we unpack what “mammon” actually means, though, it is important to consider the etymology or root of the word and its context. When the Gospels were written in Greek, and when St. Jerome later translated the whole Bible into Latin, translators handled thousands upon thousands of words. Mammon was not one of them. They left it untranslated, in both Greek and Latin. St. Jerome left the word untranslated because it's a name, and flattening it to "money" would minimize the weight of it.
So what does mammon actually refer to? Its deepest history is debated, but the explanation most scholars reach for, including the Jesuit Fr. Joseph Fitzmyer, connects it to an ancient Semitic root, ʾmn and whether you know it or not, you already say that root several times a day, because it's the root behind the word amen: to be firm, to be steady, to be reliable, to lean on, to trust.
Do you see it? Mammon does not mean money. Mammon means the thing you trust.
Jesus is not scolding you for having a business bank account. He is putting His finger on where you have set your faith down, which is why He calls it a master and not a possession. You can own a thousand things and serve none of them. But, when you're scared, you can only reach for one thing. A lot of us who have built something with our own two hands reach for our business when we should reach for God.
Understanding how this shows up in business and life
Let’s paint another picture to help you understand how difficult it can be to release this other master and cling solely to Christ.
Imagine a woman who grew up with genuine scarcity. There were seasons of not enough. Her mom counted change at the register while the line waited. Now, she is 40, she has a good income and a full pantry, and she still tucks granola bars in her purse, in the nightstand, in the glove box. Her mind knows the pantry is full, but her body does not believe it for one second. Her body is still living in the year there wasn't enough, and it is going to keep her safe in the only way it knows how.
Money stress in your business is similar. Your account can have money in it and your body still will not believe you. This is where mammon and manna turn out to be opposites.
Manna was the bread God rained down every single morning in the desert, with one rule attached: gather only today's portion, don't hoard it (Exodus 16). The people who didn't trust that, who stockpiled against tomorrow, woke up to a pile of bread full of worms. Manna is provision received with an open hand, one day at a time. Mammon is provision that you are grasping in a closed fist, because deep down you do not believe there will be more in the morning.
Your body has been choosing the closed fist posture for a long time, and it is not a willpower problem or a greed problem.
What this looks like in real life
If you're wondering whether the number has quietly become your master, here are the signs I see over and over:
You can do the “invisible” work of your business for hours, but the moment you know you need to raise your prices, announce a launch, or send the sales email, your whole body says nope, absolutely not!
You check your bank balance or sales constantly even though they never actually make you feel better. You do it again in 20 minutes anyway.
A genuinely good month gives you about nine days of peace before you start to feel “not enough” again and you start reworking everything.
You feel real peace about your work in prayer, and real panic in your body the second it's time to act.
You have priced things from fear and scarcity and even said yes to the wrong client out of fear.
That gap between a soul that says yes and a body that says no is not hypocrisy or weak faith. That gap is a wound, still doing arithmetic from 20 or 30 years ago.
Why your body keeps grabbing for mammon
Your nervous system has one job it takes more seriously than any other, which is to keep you alive. When the mammon you’re leaning on doesn’t make you “feel” better, your body does not stop to think it through. It sounds the alarm, pulls the blood away from the part of your brain that makes wise logical, business decisions, and gets you ready to fight or run. You cannot strategize in that state; you can only survive it.
This is even harder for you than for most because you're the owner. Nobody hands you a paycheck on the first and the fifteenth. It feels like it all rests on you, on your launch, your list, your last post, your ability to conjure the magic number out of thin air again this month. Unfortunately, this pattern is reinforced by the culture that says hustle harder and be more productive.
In order to combat this message, we need to listen to what St. Paul actually says: Walk in the Spirit and you won't carry out the desires of the flesh, because the flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh, "so that you do not do the things you want to do" (Galatians 5:17).
Then look at the list Paul calls the works of the flesh, and read it not as a rap sheet but as a photograph: enmities, jealousies, quarrels, factions, envies (Galatians 5:20). That is not a portrait of how wicked you are. That is what a business looks like when it's run from a wound. It's the comparison that eats you alive when another woman in your niche launches. Quiet rivalries become envy dressed up as market research.
Paul does not say, "So try harder to be nicer." He says here is the fruit of the Spirit: charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness (Galatians 5:22). Notice he says fruit, not achievement, and not output. Fruit is what grows on its own when a tree is planted in good soil with healthy roots. Peace grows in a woman whose roots are finally sunk into the Father instead of the number.
This was never really about money or “your mammon”
Like everything in the spiritual life, your mammon presents you with a choice. You are always either taking a step toward the Father or away from Him. Left dark and unnamed, money stress becomes a place the enemy is glad to furnish: with comparison, with envy of the woman whose business looks effortless, with resentment toward your husband or your season, and with the slow lie that God is holding out on you. Brought into the light, that same spot becomes holy ground. Your business is revealing what God wants to redeem.
The goal is to finally lean your whole weight on your Father. A woman whose business is her offering and not her god – who watches the number, stewards it well, makes wise moves, and does not hand it her peace – realizes her peace was never sitting there to begin with. It was sitting in the One who feeds the birds that run no business at all, who dresses the lilies that have never once refreshed a sales page, and who has known exactly what you need since before you were born.
That woman – unhurried and unafraid and certain of Whose she is – is the woman God had in mind when He made you. Seek first His Kingdom. The rest, He promised, gets added when you’re ready.
Brigid Tebaldi is a wife, mother of five, homeschooling mom, and board certified health coach specializing in Spiritual Somatic Rewiring - a signature framework that combines nervous system repair, subconscious belief work, and the truth of scripture to create permanent transformation at the root level. When she's not in session you'll find her outside with her kids, deep in a conspiracy theory podcast, or in the kitchen baking something that disappears as quickly as it comes out of the oven.