Psalm 56:3-4, Matthew 6:20-21
“Store up for yourself treasure in heaven, through placing your trust in Me. This practice will keep you in My Peace.” Jesus Calling
Until recently, storing my treasures in heaven and trust did not seem to be on the same playing field. They didn’t seem like they went together like peanut butter and jelly. Storing up treasures in Heaven to me was don’t worry excessively about what your bank account looks like because you can’t take it with you anyways, and trusting God looked more like “God, I didn’t study for this test as much as I should have, but I trust that you won’t let me down.” My GPA can speak to the fact that I don’t believe God “bailed” me out of not studying all the time; the grades would have probably been worse, but my last minute “hail-mary” (talking football play here, not actual prayer) didn’t magically make my C become an A just because I told God that he wouldn’t let me down. That is not the trust the keeps us in His presence.
Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasures are, there your heart will be also.” I have heard that verse preached on by a few different people who have tried to make it a sin because your bank account has more than a couple zeros at the end of the numbers. I have heard that you can’t be rich and a Christian. You know the camel through the eye of the needle thing. But I want to challenge that. Down a few verses in verse 24 it says that “no one can serve two masters…” it lists wealth at the end of that verse as a master that cannot be served along with God, but it does not say that you cannot have wealth. It says that you cannot have two masters. There is a big difference between having money and worshipping money; although sometimes there is a fine line that between the two. But at the end of verse 24 in Matthew 6 you can place whatever word you would like in place of wealth. Maybe your master is popularity, power, a sin you struggle with, fill in the blank; that verse still means the same thing. You cannot serve God completely if you have something in your life that you are treating as an equal to God.
When Jesus says in Matthew 6 to store up for yourselves treasures in Heaven, I know he isn’t talking about building up your bank account for use in Heaven, (I hear they don’t have ATM’s there). Instead Jesus is asking you to examine your life and build up qualities that are Heavenly qualities. He is asking us to serve the one true God instead of placing other things in our lives that we place on equal footing or even higher than God. He is asking us to be kingdom people who have the desires of God in their hearts instead of desires of this world. Let me say that again, God is imploring us to be kingdom people who have the desires of God in our hearts instead of the desires of this world. That last part hits home really hard for me because there are desires of this world that I struggle with immensely. But God is calling me through His Son to leave those desires in this world and instead be a kingdom person.
That is where the trust comes in and makes the other side of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich. We are a fallen people who continuously look for out for our best interest first, but by God sending his Son to the cross for you and for me, he is asking us to trust that His plan is way better than ours. He is asking that we store up treasures in Heaven because our God wants nothing more than to spend eternity in Heaven with us. Trusting that giving up the desires of this world and following Jesus is the type of treasure that we can store up in Heaven. Trusting that God has a plan for each and every one of our lives that is so much better than anything we can ever imagine is building up treasures in Heaven. Trusting that even though we stumble and fall, our God will lift us up, dust us off and continue to hold us as we walk with him that is building up treasures in Heaven. Having a super large bank account with more zeroes than I can count, but spending the majority of that helping widows and orphans, spending that money to help spread the Word of God to people who are so desperately wanting to hear the Good News, that is storing up treasures in Heaven. Trust in God that His plan is better than mine, better than yours. Build that treasure in Heaven. Love God:Love Men
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