What is your Treasure?

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:21

This has always been taught in my hearing as wherever your money is that is where your heart will be and conversely wherever your heart is that is where you will put your money.  What you spend your money on reveals something about your heart.

Sounds pretty right.  And there is great validity and proof to back that up.  But let me propose another angle.  What is your treasure?

Thinking about this released me from being tied to money as the great definer of who I am and what I love or consider important.  No longer is money to be what judges me and deems my heart worthy.  No, money is a tool and it has no life.  

If I say my treasure is my family, the people that I love, and if this is true then you will find that this is where my heart will be.  If my heart is always with my husband then guess what, He must be my treasure.

Your treasure doesn’t have to be money and money doesn’t define what your heart is after - UNLESS of course your treasure IS money and your heart is after riches or seeks security from it.  Then there is a whole other heart issue that needs to be dealt with.  

So there is truth that money and your use of it can indicate where your heart is at, but let’s not limit our understanding to it just being money.  Otherwise we may not only miss seeing the real treasure in our lives and realizing the state of our heart but we may also be a slave to the money mentality.

But that’s for another blog entirely.....

Let’s look at the context.

This verse is something that Jesus said - about five minutes after he taught us how to pray.  He was talking about how we shouldn’t make big impressive speeches for those around who may hear but to pray directly to God as a Father and even in secret.  He gives instruction that when you fast not to let everybody know in order to gain recognition and impress others. He says people who do this have already received their reward. Then He say to instead, “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven...” 

So what does Jesus define as the Treasure?  Well, for certain he is not even talking here about money at all.  He is talking about a personal interaction between you and Father God.  He’s is talking about a relationship.  He is talking about recognition and reward from our Daddy.  He says store it up because if you do this, guess what happens to your heart??!?!?  

Do you mean to tell me that all that striving to keep my mind focused on godly principles wont‘ be what attaches my heart to God?  That all my giving and time spent working is not going to make me fall in love with Him?  That doing miracles and preaching to the world and giving and other good works are not storing up treasure in Heaven?  Do you mean that treasure is not a chest full of gold and a mountain of pearls with large trophy looking chalices of silver encrusted with jewels??

Yup.

So, what is your treasure?  Jesus gave a sweet picture of what true everlasting treasure is - the one thing that we can pursue that will be eternal and beyond earthly value.  It’s our relationship with the Father.  And the more we pursue intimacy and communication with Him, the more we invest our hearts in the eternal.  And a natural result of that , by the way, is that the things of earth won’t seem to have the same hold and control over us that they used to.  Because our home is becoming more there than here.

And that is a beautiful thing.