Faith

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Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy…But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven” Matthew 6:19-20.

My dad worked in the secular world most of his life and retired no less than 4 times. I’m not sure what the motivation was each time he came out of retirement. I do know that he experienced true and final joy when he began his work with Children’s Evangelism Fellowship. This was a ministry dedicated to bringing unchurched children to Christ. He worked full time in this ministry, along with the help of Mother, over a span of 10 years even as he was dying with cancer. He never took a dime for his tireless and committed efforts in introducing children to the love of Jesus. As his bank balance decreased I know that his spiritual balance increased. Daddy and Mother gave when they didn’t have anything to give with trust in God that He would take care of them until the end. God has been faithful and I can’t help but believe that Mother is being provided for by the spiritual bank they stored up in Heaven. What we relinquish to Heaven on God’s behalf will be returned to us ten-fold.

In considering this I ask myself what hours in the day do I spend on storing up treasures in Heaven? In what activities do I engage during the day that do not directly benefit me, but benefit others in pointing to Christ? We all have been given the structure of 24 hours in a day with the freedom and ability to choose life or death…activities of the Spirit or of the flesh. How will we choose? Will we simply set up our day as hoarders…hoarding every hour for ourselves? Or will we relinquish a portion of our time daily like tithing to God? He has given us these precious hours in every day to do the work of the Kingdom so are we?

What if God was so narrowly focused on preparing our final future…our mansions…that He ignored the daily needs of our life in the now? Many times that is what we are doing as Christians. We are so single focused on something in the now we ignore the spiritual work that leads to the rewards that God wants to give in the future. In the parable of the rich fool (Luke 12:16-21) the lesson from Jesus was to invest your life in things that have eternal value and won’t pass away with time. ‘Spiritual realities do not suffer decay…To lead people to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ means that their eternity is immediately altered and a place in heaven is prepared as a result of what you did on earth’ Experiencing God, p. 38. What could you possibly do today that is more important than the actual work of your hands on February 26, 2014 impacting heaven for eternity?

‘This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the LORD your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the LORD is your life’ Deut. 30:19-20.

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