Treasures of the heart

Matthew 6:21,

²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I had someone say these words to me recently and it has taken me a few weeks to mediate on them. I suddenly realized that there is a huge possibility that the main struggle in my life is a direct result of not fully laying down and giving over my heart to the Lord. It isn’t as if I have not tracked down this road with God before, I guess I was just taken back at the fact that even though I have come so far, I still have so far to go. Why do I have such a hard time FULLY trusting God with everything? What do I have to gain in believing that I have one ounce of control over this life other than who I choose to serve and the way I choose to live it?

These treasures are not mine, they are His, and until I am willing to unleash the tight grip I have over them then I will not experience the fullness of what this treasure has to offer. I’m exhausted and frustrated and maybe even a little bitter about it but ultimately I have no one to blame here but myself.

The Bible tells us over and over again how we are to live, it’s time we stop applying this only to the areas of our life that least inconvenience us.

I have been obsessed with time lately, ok for the past 3 or 4 years. I am often debilitated by the fear of something happening to these treasures or worried that if I release an inch of them I will somehow miss out on something. Time is such a tricky thing, it can heal but it can also fill you with regret if it goes by too fast. I love the verse that says, “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day, 2 Peter 3:8”.

Eternity is hard to grasp, isn’t it? What seems so permanent here is so temporal to God. Living in the fullness of the Freedom in Christ only becomes a reality when we are willing to lay down the control, the fear and the distrust…and honestly don’t we have enough to worry about without carrying around all of that?

 Matthew 6:19-21 says, 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

 For each of us this represents different things. For some of you it is wealth or materialistic things (been there), for others it may be relationships and lifestyles, for many of us it is our children. A friend’s sister was just told that her daughter’s cancer has returned after being in remission for three years and the doctors have told them to be prepared to let her go. I can’t even type that without being covered with chills and tears in my eyes. Don’t think for a minute that their treasure is not that precious child.

There are many more things that I could list here that we harbor up in our hearts. All of them need to be entrusted to Jesus, it’s unfortunate because it is hard but we can be thankful for it because there is freedom in that.

If you had a window into the crevasses of your heart what would you find there? Aren’t you tired of trying to hold onto the slippery grip of life? Where your treasure is there your heart will be too…where is yours?