Luke 12:34 “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

This very simple little verse explains much of human psychology. It makes an enormous difference what we consider valuable. Materialism has long been rampant, it just takes different forms with passing fashion. I feel one of the reasons God allows natural disasters is to try to teach us what really is important by stripping away all that isn’t. Sadly, even then we sometimes refuse to learn. Those who have learned to live well, hold things loosely and people closely, and faith the closest of all. Two Christian songs come to mind. One is, “Using Things and Loving People,” and the other is, “Prayer is the Key to Heaven, but Faith Unlocks the Door.” Society, with the strong encouragement of the devil, teaches us to value things like material wealth and what we can get with it, to the point of treating a child in the womb as an inconvenience to be disposed of, and those out of the womb as not much better. That attitude also feeds human trafficking, which is currently at extremely high levels despite being technically illegal. The reason the second song comes to mind is that we can’t appropriate the true treasure God has for us (heaven) without faith. Many people can mouth pious words, but their attitudes and actions show that they don’t really trust the one to whom they claim to be praying. Only through faith can we make God our treasure, but if we will do that, everything else falls into place.

I still have problems with misplaced priorities at times, but thankfully age and experience have gone a long way in straightening me out. As a pastor I deal with the consequences of misplaced values and priorities all the time. Sometimes I wish for a “good sense pill” I could give people to take! Since such doesn’t exist, I’ve got to pray for people and speak the truth in love to them. Several come to mind who are currently struggling in this area of values. I can’t “fix” them, but I can be available for God to speak through me to them, so that is where my focus should be. I must not take their failures as my burdens, but neither am I to dismiss them from my mind and heart and fail to pray for them. I need to exercise the weapons God has given me on their behalf (2 Corinthians 10:4-5) so that they may be set free to choose rightly, for their salvation.

Father, thank You that You do use me to impact others and draw them to You. I pray that I would value You and them enough to be fully available to You for that purpose. Help me be a faithful steward of all You place in my hands, but hold it all loosely, valuing Your kingdom and those for whom Christ died rather than anything temporal. May Your name be hallowed and Your kingdom come as Your will is done, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!