“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”
Proverbs 4:23 NLT
“Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”
Matthew 6:21 NLT
“What is in your treasure chest?” “What would you put in your treasure chest?”
God brought these questions to my mind as I was reading Proverbs 4.
I began to think about a material treasure chest. I said to myself, “Well duh, only valuable things should go in your treasure chest.” “That’s not a hard question.”
But then God showed me our heart is like a treasure chest yet we don’t apply that same standard as a physical one. We often value and store junk in our heart’s treasure chest. Your heart is where your treasure lies.
Time for a Heart check.
Lord, Jesus these questions were so difficult for me to answer and the answers are still unfolding in my life. I didn’t realize how important my heart was to God. God showed me it is important because, your motives, desires, thoughts, and actions comes from there and determines the path of your life. But the surprising factor of this phenomenon was that what you value is linked to your desires, actions, and motives. Can you believe it? It begins with what you treasure!
What you treasure is so important! Whether it be relationships, money, wealth, power, status, ideologies or material things, if you treasure these things more than God, you will find yourself walking in a destructive path. I wasn’t aware of this, until God revealed it to me, that I cherished validation from people more than my relationship with the Lord.
Those cherished desires to feel loved and accepted by people led me into the wrong relationships. I acted out and compromised my faith to obtain what I thought was everything! I became materialistic and self-absorbed. Valuing approval from people led me to compare myself to others. I was left always feeling inadequate. Not to mention, I allowed social media to negatively influence my value system. I thought I had to look, talk and act like what I saw to be wanted or relevant. For some time, I functioned like this, until I noticed I wasn’t gaining the results I so desperately cherished. In the end, it wasn’t worth it! This scripture came to my mind:
“And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed? (Luke 9:25 NLT)
Then God in His infinite wisdom and grace, showed me that I had misplaced value.
I began to notice that my heart was far from Him and that my heart was filled with worthless things that were causing me to function in this unhealthy manner. God ask me to let those things go because I was showing them more affection in such a way that only belongs to Him. In other words, God told me they were idols and I must dethrone them.
God said, "They are not worth the space in your treasure chest, I am! I want to sit on the throne of your heart so I can lead you into the prosperous path that I planned for you long ago and change your behaviors." He also told me I need to treasure heavenly things because those things are eternal. I was valuing superficial things which were temporary.
God showed me the things I should place in my treasure chest, such as, worshiping Him first, loving myself and then loving others. I should treasure being humble and serving others. I should value being His hands and feet on the earth to give His unfailing love! Lastly, I should cherish living upright and bringing Him glory because those things are true riches and have eternal weight! Godly things I should hold dear to my heart. But, in order to change my value system, I had to give God my whole heart not a part of it.
I realized most of my heart’s space was filled with other things. So I decided to get rid of all the junk that I treasured, in order for God to have that space in my heart. I did this by praying and reading God’s Word. Devotional time with Him, gives God the opportunity to pour into you His values and washing out the counterfeits. Your treasure chest is so valuable to God so guard it! You guard it by holding tight on to the keys which are your eyes and ears. These are what give gateway to your heart. Be careful what you listen to and watch because your heart’s treasure depends on it!
So now I direct the question to you, “what do you treasure and how has it affected the course of your life?”