What’s Your Treasure?
What is your all time FAVORITE Bible verse? Is it John 3:16? Maybe Jeremiah 29:11? Or is it one of the other 23,145 verses in the Bible? (WOW!! with that many options we should be picking our favorite one hundred instead of our favorite one!) One of my favorite one hundred verses (ok, it’s definitely top 5) is Matthew 6:21 “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Now there’s a story as to why this is one of my favorites. You should have a story for each of your favorites too, if not then why is it your favorite? Even if your story is flipping open your Bible and pointing to a random verse, if God used that to speak to you through what is now your favorite verse, then that’s your verse story!
Anyway, back on topic. This Story Time With Natalie is my Matt 6:21 verse story. I first discovered this verse in the Bible when I was a teenager in Bible Quizzing at my church. (Because let’s be honest, with 23,145 verses crammed in there, we’re not going to know them all right away!) That year we were quizzing on the book of Matthew and 6:21 was a quote, meaning in a quiz match, the reference would be given and you had to quote the verse word for word. I always like to memorize these special verses because not everyone else would and it gave me more opportunities to answer. So as I was studying and memorizing, I started to think about what this verse actually means. “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus said these words during the Sermon on the Mount and he was talking about storing up treasures. He explained that we shouldn’t store up our treasures here on Earth because they won’t last, they’ll be destroyed. When we store up treasures in heaven, there’s no chance of them being destroyed. Then he gives this statement, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” If what we treasure is only the material things here on Earth, our hearts will follow. What we treasure will pull our hearts to focus on and care about Earthly things rather than heavenly things (duh that makes sense right?)
Now here’s a funny part to the story. One of my friends from the quiz team found out how much I liked this verse so she made me a sign of it…problem is, she painted it backwards! So now I have a sign in my bedroom that says “For where your heart is, there your treasure will be.” The thing is, she’s not wrong! This treasure/heart relationship goes both ways! Your heart is going to follow your treasure but your treasure will also follow your heart. If you set your heart on things above, soon you will start to treasure those things more than your material possessions.
Chapter 11 of ‘Sex and Money’ is called Treasure Hunters and my mind immediately made the connection to this verse. (Remember that book by Paul David Tripp I was reading for my class at LBC? I haven’t talked about it in awhile but I’m still reading it.) Guess what? I wasn’t the only one who connected this verse! Tripp did too and he mentioned it on page 159. He says “We are all treasure hunters. We name things as important to us, and we all live to get and experience what we have named as important…And our lives follow the trail of choices, decisions, and actions that have been magnetized by what we hold dear.” That’s exactly what Jesus was talking about! If you’re like me (single college student) maybe you treasure a degree, or a social life, or marriage, or money. Maybe you treasure all of that! But I doubt anyone can honestly say they don’t treasure any of that because most likely, we all treasure money to some extent, which is the specific treasure that Tripp is addressing in this chapter.
CONNECTION! I was reading a blog the other day by Jordan Lee Dooley (never heard of her? Look her up because she is such an inspiration!) And she was talking about money. In her post, she said how when she got married, she was that worried about money that she was working on her honeymoon! CRAZY! But that’s because in that moment, she was treasuring money and her heart followed. You would think that her heart would belong fully to her brand new husband, or as a strong Christian woman, her heart would belong to the Lord, but a part of her heart belonged to money as well. (Now obviously I’m only saying this based on the actions that she spoke of in her post, it’s not like I actually know her or know what she was thinking at that time..although how cool would that be!) But this is such a good example of how our actions follow our hearts and what we treasure.
When we treasure something and our hearts follow, that something becomes our master. While this could be any number of things for each of us, Jesus specifically addresses money. He says “You cannot serve both God and money” (Matt 6:24). This is a major problem for us! We should be serving God but instead we’re serving ourselves with money. And unfortunately, this is something that we’re all susceptible to and we can’t fix it ourselves. We need help. We need to recognize that we’ve been given a better gift than money; “the gift of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ” (page 166). When we truly understand the “incalculable value of the kingdom of God,” (page 168) we will treasure that more than anything else.
Isn’t it so cool how everything in our lives connects?! What we treasure is very connected to where our heart goes and these both connect to our worship. Whatever we treasure, wherever our hearts are, that’s what we will worship. Jumping to this reoccurring theme of worship again was bound to happen at some point in this post because again, everything is connected! Treasure God’s gift of grace and your heart will follow. Once you’re treasuring God and He has your heart, you will be free to fully and completely worship God in everything that you do! So what’s your treasure?
Want to read more about treasuring God rather than money? Check out this article by John Piper!
Do you think Jordan Lee Dooley sounds super cool? Check out her website! (boys, maybe this is something you should skip since her main audience is women…)
