Matthew 6:19-21
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
I have been asking myself how possible it is to lay up treasure in heaven. Does it mean you should not be rich or physically and visibly wealthy here on earth? Many people have always tried to paint the gospel as if it is supposed only to be done by the poor or as if being physically rich and wealthy blocks you from getting into the kingdom of God. But nothing can be further from the truth!
What being wealthy demands is more discipline and more strength to detach yourself from being controlled or held captive by the wealth. It demands that you develop the ability to loosely hold onto physical wealth and use it to build the kingdom. It is a cycle, you convert spiritual wealth to physical wealth to build a kindgom legacy which in turn can be converted to physical wealth and the cycle goes on and on.
Any addition to your physical possessions should easien your service to God. One thing you learn from Abraham is that he could easily release to God, whatever he had gotten from the LORD. If whatever you have cannot be released easily to God, then, it means that you are captured by what you have gotten and it has become lord over you.
The cenrurion told Jesus that, "I have men under me and if I tell one go, they go, if I tell another come, they come" (Matt 8:9). That is how wealth should be, it should be like soldiers under your authority that you command and send as you wish, feel or deem fit. Allocating resources to a certain cause, should not be hindered by the fear that you might lose it, it should only be stopped by your evaluation of the cause and under your decretion deeming it unfit or unworthy of your support.
Any person that refuses or withdraws from supporting a cause because they fear they might lose what they invest in or give to it, manifests and exhibits and reveals that their treasure is actually earthly; which can be depleted, lost, affected by earthly factors, devoured by moths and stolen by thieves. The moment you think, "Can I lose this?" Or "No, I may lose this" or any such notion, automatically makes what you want to give earthly.
This does not mean that you should fund every cause that come your way. It means that your decision not to fund a cause should never be, "I might lose what I give". Whether you fund or support a genuine cause or not, a genuine man of God or a fake one, if your wealth is heavenly, it cannot be depleted, stolen or destroyed. The Bible says in Psalms 112:5, "A good man shows favor, and lends, he will guide his affairs with discretion". So, what makes a godly man give to you or not, is not the confidence of a good return or the fear of a loss, but his wisdom and ability to look at your cause and deem it fit and worthy of his support.
Proverbs 2:11, "discretion shall preserve thee, understanding shall keep thee". Isaiah 28:24-26, talks about a farmer and how they prepare their land, the amount of time they spend on it. How the farmer chooses which seed should be planted where. It finishes by saying that a good farmer is instructed by God to discretion (v26). Jeremiah 10:12 says that even God, made the earth by His power, established the world by His wisdom and stretched the heavens (galaxies) by his discretion.
Discretion means that I do not need to explain to you why I am not financing or funding or supporting your cause. It also means that if I invest in a thing and it fails or sinks it was my judgment of its longevity that was wrong and that is not to mean that I have lost what I invested.
Children of God with a kingdom mentality do not lose anything they put into anything. Be it energy, money or time. Even that relationship that you got into and are tempted to think was a waste of time, if you looked at it with a kingdom mentality, you will be happy to know that you didn't lose anything. Why? Because, a kingdom minded person does not have anything to give that is not hewn and made of heavenly material. And if it is made of heavenly material, then, it cannot be wasted, destroyed or lost.
Anything that can be lost, wasted and or destroyed was made with earthly material. The reason why you may give an offering in church and later feel like you lost it, is because you gave an earthly thing to a heavenly agenda or worse an earthly offering to an earthly agenda. Jesus said, "Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and give to God what belongs to God" (Mark 12:17). It is possible to give to Caesar, what belongs to God, that will not be a waste or a loss. But if you give to God what belongs to Caesar, it may end up being a loss. When you give to God what is perishable, it will not survive the longevity of the Kingdom agenda.
God's kingdom must be built using kingdom or heavenly materials. I was reading the geneology in Genesis 5, I noticed that the longer people lived, the longer they waited before they started giving birth. The kingdom of God is timeless, what you call a long wait before you fruits, is a normal process or wait-time in a realm where time is not a factor!
Building the kingdom using earthly materials means that what is built is destructible, can be broken, broken into and stolen; which is a loss.
What does it mean to lay up treasures or wealth or riches in heaven? It is your ability to understand that "not having it in hand, does not mean not having it". Understanding that your purchase power is not determined by what you have at hand or in bank. Understanding that the physical is only a show of what you were able to manifest from the heavenly and there is much more from where that came from. It is your ability to stop laying confidence or being discouraged by what you have amassed by having all your confidence in a God who has a reserve that you cannot deplete.
When the prodigal son came back, his father did not tell him that, "now that you wasted your portion, I have nothing else to give you!" No! The stupidity of a wasteful son cannot deplete the reserve of the father. There is no amount of wasting you can do that can finish what God has in store for you. Even if everybody in the body of Christ decided to be wasteful, they'd still not deplete it. But it is wisdom and discretion that seperates us and differentiates some of us from others. That some will give to any Tom, Dick and Harry, that some are so easily moved by emotions and end up making silly investments repeatedly, being conned and duped, while others are able to dissect a matter and decide whether or not it is a worthy engagement.
If they decide not to engage, it is not because they fear loss or think that if they give to the cause they will run bankrupt, no! Some can even look at a cause and deem it outright foolish but still fund it or engage and invest in it. Because there is no amount of giving that can run them out; not spiritually. May be physically, but their not having something physically does not mean them not having it at all! Where they got what they gave out is a supply that never runs dry! And all they need is to master the art of transforming the spiritual into the physical.
This is the difference between those who have treasures, wealth and riches in heaven and those who do not. Those who do not will always fear losing what they give. Even when they tell you, "Let me pray about your cause and see if God will allow me to invest or engage in it", their prayer to God, is to ask Him to guard them from loss and assure them that what they invest they will get back! This is from whence such teachnngs as, "look for a fertile ground to give your seed" comes from. But those who have treasures in heaven know that they cannot lose anything, yes! Even that which is given to a lost cause! What a poor man calls "wastage", the wealthy call it, "enjoying life". You only think it's wastage because of how limited your supply is, but if you knew that you have unlimited supply, undepletable source, you'd probably change how you spend and what you spend it on too. I have seen some people who meet hawkers in the streets asks them what they make the whole day, buy the whole stock and give it to passersby and pay the hawker twice or thrice what they'd have made. To a person without money, that is wastage, but to a person with money, that is philanthropy.
In Jesus' parable of the sower, even the seeds that fell by the wayside FED THE BIRDS; it was not a waste! What fell on the rocks grew; growth means it was not a waste; only that the ground could not support greater growth. What fell among the thorns grew too, but was constrained and constricted. And what fell on good ground gave back so much that what did not grow to fruition didn't matter. That right there is a kingdom mentality. Even if you may give to a lost cause, if you are a giver that never stops giving or that is never stopped from giving by fear of loss, what will give back, will give so much that what did not, will not seem to matter.
The sower did not stop to salvage or protect what fell outside the fertile ground! Jesus said if you try to uproot tares from among the wheat, you will uproot the wheat too. But if you wait for it to grow together, you will discover that you'll get so much wheat, that the presence of tares will not matter! People whose treasures are earthly will stop to first create guards against thievery and protect themselves from loss. But those who have kingdom mentality know that, "one day in the presence of God, is worth a tbousand elsewhere"! This means that one seed that is heavenly can bring back more fruit than a thousand earthly seeds. It means that you do not need every seed you plant to give forth fruit! One heavenly seed that falls in unfertile, unsupportive grounds is not a loss, because the other seeds that fall on fertile ground will cover up; so much so that there will be no loss.
Many are the children of the barren than of the fruitful woman (Isa 54:1). We know that Peninah had children before Hannah, but we know none of them by name, yet Samuel, one seed that was heavenly surpassed all of them by far. You know you've laid up treasures in heaven when your decision to give it out or not is not based on either your confidence for a return nor the fear of loss, but purely by your discretion: your wisdom and ability to decide when, where and how to engage or disengage.
May God bless you, keep you and lift you higher than I am. Shalom and keep the faith.
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