Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke12:34). As I have written previously, a good test of where you are placing your treasure is to look at your bank and credit card statements. Where you are spending your money is where you are placing your treasure. While this is true, it recently occurred to me there is a much deeper meaning to Jesus’s words.
It’s not just the specifics of where we are spending our money which reveals where we are placing our treasure, it’s much bigger than that. We will spend our money on things of this world or for God’s Kingdom. Our treasure is being amassed in earthen containers (banks, possessions, and brokerages) or in Heavenly realms. We are either building up things we cannot keep or investing in what we cannot lose (Luke 9:24).
We will not keep what we acquire in this life or build up on this earth. The truth is when we die everything we’ve amassed for our comfort, security, or legacy will go away. Death cannot be escaped and the only thing it will not consume is our soul and what we have invested in the eternal Kingdom of God. All our career climbing, wall building, and money saving will be wiped away. If we lived well, perhaps what we had will be remembered by a few for a short period. But over time, even such memories will fade. People will move on, and what we built will fade away like a dream in the night. What remains is what we did for the sake of God’s glory and God’s Kingdom.
We will invest our resources (our time, energy, and money) in building a kingdom which will not last or investing in God’s Kingdom which endures forever. There is no third choice. Each of us is building one kingdom or the other. This should, no must, affect the way we spend our days. We are here but for a moment and then will pass away like the withering grass (Isaiah 40:8). How many of us live our lives with this in mind? Our focus is on providing for our own comfort, security, and retirement. Meanwhile, people – flesh and blood human beings – are dying without ever having known the love of Jesus.
We live in a world where nearly a billion people are starving while we ply our faces with comfort food around the clock. Over two billion lack clean drinking water in their homes while we regularly consume expensive bottled and even flavored water at our whim. More tragic still, while most American households own multiple Bibles, a billion and a half people do not have access to the full Bible in their native tongue. Nearly 250 million lack any Scripture at all. Between the lack of food, clean water, and Scripture, the fact is thousands of people are dying every day without knowing Jesus. Thousands of souls are going to Hell while we laze in our comfort and relative luxury. This is where we have chosen to place our treasure. It is for this I am convinced we will all have to answer when we meet Jesus.
Something has to change. More precisely, someone has to change. In fact, a whole lot of someone’s need to change. To be blunt, I must change and so must you. We cannot call ourselves followers of Jesus and refuse to live as He did (I John 2:6). We cannot claim to be His disciples and refuse to forsake everything to follow Him. Where is your treasure? Where is mine? We know the answer, and it isn’t good. What are you willing to do about it? This is the question we all must answer for ourselves and we must answer it right now. Our next move determines how we will answer when Jesus asks, “Where is your treasure?” Choose well and choose now.