Eternal Stock Options- Matthew 6:19-21

 

Let's be clear, Jesus was very clear about "denying self," and "taking up crosses," and "losing life for [his] sake." He talked about counting the cost often to his followers and sometimes it seemed like he did so for the purpose of driving some of the free loaders away.

But when you really look into what he was saying and you really understand what is going on in scripture, you start to realize that God has never scrimped on His offers of reward. The difference for the true follower of God is simply the nature of the reward.

C.S. Lewis gives the illustration of the boy making mud pies in a slum who passes up a vacation to the beach because he has no comprehension of the beach and is enjoying himself all too well with the mud pies to bother himself with the beach.

It makes perfect sense that Jesus moves from the motivation with which we practice righteousness, pray and fast (for the recognition from men, or the for the recognition of God), to a very similar statement in verses 19-21 about the differences in treasure. Once again, I am incredibly thankful that God "knows how we are formed; He knows we are but dust" (Psalm 103:13). He doesn't ask me to do something just because it is the right thing to do. He has every right to do that...He's the Almighty God. Unlike Bill Cosby, He actually does have the right to say, "I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it." Yes, He could force obedience if He wanted to. But instead, He simply tells me over and over and over again that what he has planned for me is sooo much better than anything I could ever imagine (1 Corinthians 2:9)! And when I finally trust that what He is promising is really going to happen and I start making those decisions (including the first decision to put faith in Christ), then He changes me from the inside out based on His motivations and His power instead of just my own, through His Spirit that lives in me.

It's really a simple game of "Would you rather?" 

• Would you rather have riches for 95 years or for all of eternity?
• Would you rather have friends who will laugh at your jokes for a week or even a few years, or a friend who will stick closer than a brother for all of eternity?
• Would you rather "become one" with someone in thought or in deed for a fleeting pleasure over the next few minutes or hours, or experience a oneness with God that is beyond your wildest dreams?
• Would you rather be your own master and have lots of freedom and comforts and live selfishly now, or hear the one true master say "well done, good and faithful servant...come and share your master's happiness"?

Those questions are incredibly easy to answer when they are asked like that. They are a lot harder to answer with action in the small moments and decisions that seem so benign and yet lead to the point that we choose the temporary over the eternal.

It becomes a "chicken and the egg" thing.

"For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Is the location of our treasure just a symptom of what kind of heart we have, or does our heart actually follow the places that we have piled up treasures?

I think the answer is yes.

That is why it is so crucial to weigh even the most seemingly benign choices about time, money, words, emotions, and relationships in the scale of the eternal versus the temporary. Will this decision add to my heavenly bank account or only to my earthly account? If the answer is the latter, then even if it doesn't seem like a big deal, then I need to stop and think about how many deposits I've already made to that account for fear that if I pile up too much...my heart will follow right along and be trapped on the wrong side of "would you rather."

I'd rather have riches in heaven, wouldn't you? What would my life look like today if that were true? What would yours? I almost feel like God is daring us to find out.

For the Love of Money...how stupid!- Ecclesiastes 5:10

I loved Kevin's cartoon in the bulletin last week. If you didn't see it, it was a picture of a little boy on Santa's lap. Santa looked a little confused as the boy was saying, "All I want for Christmas is more than my brother."

That's a cute cartoon and we can chuckle at the thought of the truth of that scenario on Christmas morning. It's also an incredibly sad reminder though, that unfortunately many of us never grow out of that line of thinking. We may not verbalize the words exactly like that, and most of us aren't still crawling into Santa's lap with our selfish requests, but deep down the desire to continually just have more keeps us constantly begging life for more...occasionally we even pretend to be sitting in God's lap as a faithful child when we make our self-centered pleas.

How blessed would we all be if we could let Solomon's advice really sink in!?  How tragic for Solomon that it took most of his life before he came back to the truth that he knew when we started out as a man of God.

I'd like to leave the conversation on this one open because it's an incredibly easy to understand principle...and yet so hard to live and to teach. Tie this statement to Jesus' teaching about a rich man getting into the kingdom of heaven and laying up treasures in heaven as opposed to earth because "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" and we realize that this is a BIG deal!

 "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs." (1 Timothy 6:10)

Solomon puts it just as bluntly as it can be put. Chasing after riches is absolutely meaningless. We can make every excuse and come up with umpteen million justifications for why we need more money or more stuff, but deep down we know the truth. Those desire are meaningless.

Here's what I'd like to do. I want to open the comments below to suggestions and questions on how to teach ourselves and our children to trust in God instead of in riches. To end the meaningless pursuit of more that begins on Santa's lap and usually doesn't end until the death bed. How do you combat this in yourself? How are you training your children in this? What areas are especially hard that you would like advice about? I won't know many if any of those answers, but there are some incredibly Godly men and women who read this that will. Start that conversation below by clicking the comment button and let's VOW to pursue things that will never be described as "meaningless" !!!