First post in a while, and I didn’t even intend to post. I was cleaning out my tasks list and found a verse in there, which means I intended to think more deeply about it later. There’s not much hope for that right now given the hour, but I felt like a preliminary walk-through.
Just thinking about Matthew 6:21 -
This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible because it’s so clear. Your heart follows your valuable investments. People who invest in nice cars are devastated when the car gets its first scratch. People who invest in houses and property work hard to keep them clean and are embarrassed when company sees them unkempt. People who invest in stocks have it the worst – they have their hearts go up and down every time they check the web page.
We’re supposed to invest in the Kingdom of Heaven. What does that look like? I would love to make it more likely that my heart will treasure God, so in what should I invest? Further,what should I invest?
Treasure in this verse is different than money, though it doesn’t exclude it. For example, I’m giving monthly to a Campus Crusade for Christ intern, but because I set it up with their website to automatically pay monthly, I don’t notice, and I’d forgotten until now. I’m not paying attention so it’s clearly not an investment of my treasure. I’m also clearly not giving enough to feel it, so it’s even less my treasure.
What do I treasure that I could invest fully in the Kingdom of God? The first thing that comes to mind is my reputation, and immediately this becomes a bigger problem in my eyes. I have noticed that a huge impediment to my spiritual growth in the last year and a half has been my strong desire to be liked by anyone and everyone. If I’m to invest myself in the Kingdom of God, I need to put my identity in front of my peers fully in the reputation of Jesus.
“…preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:13)
If the idea is to find out what you treasure and then to put it where you would like your heart to be, I must find a way to put my very identity before non-Christians in Jesus. That way, if the real Jesus doesn’t look good to them, I necessarily don’t look good to them. It will spur me to pay attention, see? Perhaps when I meet someone new I should just get it out in the first conversation that I truly follow Jesus. That way I won’t be tempted to keep it hidden so they’ll think I’m cool or smart or funny, etc.
I’m big on small steps to start with. That way you don’t have to be amazing to get started on a good path. As someone said to me recently, a good first step is to be OK with people evenknowing I’m a Christian.
I’ll try to start this tomorrow.