You can tell what a person values by where his heart remains
focused. Take for instance, a teenage girl who has fallen in love. If she just
can’t stop talking about her new boyfriend, to the point that she’s about to
drive everyone else nuts, you need not ask if she is madly in love. Our words
are the echo of our heart. Furthermore, our heart follows what we esteem to be
our treasure.
That’s why we must be careful where we build our treasure in
this life. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” Jesus
says (Matthew 6:21). We maintain control over where our heart will be focused
until we decide where we will build our treasure. After we decide on our
treasure and invest therein, our heart will follow suit. There is no way to
separate what we treasure from where our heart exists. Even when we are
physically away, our heart is still there. Hence, the Lord’s desire is that we labor
to lay up for ourselves a treasure in heaven.Many years ago, I attended a weeklong class at a university. The entire morning of the first day, the person sitting at my left was on the phone and leaving the classroom seems like every few minutes. At lunchtime, he introduced himself to me, and he explained that since the class began that morning he had already lost over $10,000 in the stock market. He said he couldn’t concentrate on the class, and that what I had been observing that morning was he and his broker desperately trying to do what they could to minimize any further monetary loss.
He was in the class physically, but his heart was where his treasure was.
The verse above explains why many Christians in church lack
commitment to the work of the Lord. Oftentimes, they are too invested in the
things of this world. Accordingly, they are preoccupied with these things. Again, “where your treasure is, there will
your heart be also.”
So in order to change the focus of our heart, we must learn
to value the work of the Kingdom of God and invest more time and resources
there. Also bear in mind that the return on our investment in the Kingdom is much better
than the return on our worldly endeavors.Copyright ©2013 by Frank King. All rights reserved.
2 comments:
That's the worse thing Frank. Being somewhere in body but not in spirit, so to speak. I can just imagine how this man felt, knowing his money was dwindling as he sat in that class. That's why it's also important to know the consequences in what you invest in. Count the cost I say, in more ways than one.
If people take all the time and trouble to get dressed in the morning and go to church, the least they should do, is to listen to the message with all their hearts. At the end of the day, whose time will they be wasting? Certainly not Gods.
Many people attend church with no genuine commitment to the Lord. Their interests are anything but the Lord. The result is that they tend to give God their very divided attention during worship service. But because the presence of the Lord is in the service, there is always the possibility that a person will be drawn more closely to God. To me, that's one of the powerful and exciting things about the preaching of the gospel.
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