Matthew6:19-21 "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

I have my prized possessions, everyone has them. I have my treasured objects, my beloved hobbies, and I have experiences which I enjoyed exceedingly. We all do. And so far, one-by-one every single thing in my life has come under scrutiny and I have been placed into the difficult task of testing each and every above mentioned item, as well as everything else in my life. What do I treasure more? Do I treasure example A or God? How about exhibit B? And so forth. Not everything has been brought to this test, but slowly and surely they all will be and I find myself sorely lacking in certain respects in this too. I love my music, and that comes up again and again and again to be tested; I cannot treasure both music and God. I enjoy being with my friends, but I cannot have my friends and God on the same level. This also applies to serious relationships as well. What we treasure, every jot and iota of it, will be tested against our treasuring and desiring of Christ.

We treasure all the wrong things - money, stocks, long weekends off, a lake-front house, longevity, that perfect someone, even to be an international rock star. Yet, all of these things come to an end. With this period of economic turmoil, our bank or stock broker can go bankrupt and we loose all our stocks or fund (even both). We could find ourselves in too much debt and have the bank foreclose on that beautiful two/three story house on the beach. We could be diagnosed with cancer or Lou Gherig's Disease. We can learn that the perfect someone has found their perfect someone and it isn't us, everything is fleeting, everything is passing. But we desire things, all sorts of things, and most of them are bad for us. We desire Christ. This is a problem for us because we are continuously in the middle of a tug of war match between both Christ and the world. If we could only have one desire in us it would be so much easier, and yet we find that our fallen, earthly bodies which desire so much of the world (all of which God intended for good, and yet has been warped by Satan) are pulling us away from our spirit which desires only Christ! How many of us walk that line where we desire both things? Yes, it is hard! If we Christ, certainly we will get the desires of our heart, but our heart's desires are His desires and to our fallen sinful ideas, Christ's desires are not much fun. Conversely we know that the worldly desires are hurtful to us and will only bring us pain, yet we do not want to give up our apparent freedom!

What sort of treasure the is this? We go looking for treasure and we find a box, buried in the sand, but instead of containing gold and jewels, it contains rags, manure, and glass baubles! Looking deeper we will find that some of the occasional rag is actually fine gold cloth, some of the manure is in reality pure soil, and some of what we thought was glass are actually precious gems, and then we must take and test each and every item in that treasure chest. What do you want? The rags, manure, and baubles, or the cloth, the fertile soil, and the gems? Its up to you to decide, but remember that we will all face the test of Peter (John 21:15)over every desire in our lives. Christ will look us squarely in the eye and say “Do you love me more than these?” Whatever your answer is, it is between you and Him. For me, I desire it to be “Yes, Lord, you know I do” and I will treasure every minute of feeding His lambs or whatever it is He tells me to do, for that is a pursuit worthy of a lifetime.

Spirit of God, descend upon my heart;
wean it from earth; through all its pulses move;
stoop to my weakness, mighty as thou art,
and make me love thee as I ought to love.