Treasure Chests – Luke 12:34
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Look to your treasures, and you will find your heart. Take an honest, soul-searching look at what consumes your days, your energy, your thoughts, and your imaginings, and you will find your god. Is your treasure chest in heaven becoming full, or does the acquisition of wealth on earth, a larger home, and a better car consume your energy? Is your heart set on serving God in humility or on experiencing enjoyment and comfort?
The Word teaches us that the world, along with its goods and pleasures, will pass away while those things done for Christ will last forever.[1] Therefore, the life devoted to self-centered endeavors is a futile life,[2] and people who dedicate themselves to accumulating riches and enjoyment become blinded to the truth by the glint reflecting off the fool’s gold they seek. Such people will find their lust for the world’s shallow offerings leaves them empty in the end,[3] for wealth makes itself wings and flies away to the sky like an eagle,[4] and pleasure is no more lasting than a piece of chocolate in the hands of a four-year old. Even those who keep their possessions locked within their grasp throughout their lives will find that they, like every man and woman before them, must relinquish all at their death since not one single possession can follow a person beyond the grave.
As one made wise through your fellowship with Jesus, desire that which will live on throughout the eons. Post a guard over your heart against avarice and excess, and do not strive to stockpile that which you cannot keep, as did the rich fool who stored up treasures for his own use while neglecting to become rich in the Lord. He thought he could use his hoarded abundance to enjoy a long season of self-gratification, but when the Lord demanded his life of him, he left his overflowing storehouses behind to face the poverty of an eternity without God.[5]
Fill your strongbox in heaven through a life of devotion to
God and sacrificial giving to His work.
Give at every quarter. Give of
your material goods, of your time, talent, strength, and, most importantly, of your
heart. Give your all to serve the
imperishable, eternal cause of Christ and set your heart on the things above,[6] remembering always where your true treasures lie.[7]
[1] 1 John 2:17
[2] Matthew 6:19
[3] Proverbs 11:28
[4] Proverbs 23:4-5
[5] Luke 12:15-21
[6] Colossians 3:1-2
[7] Matthew 6:20-21
