Where's Your Treasure?

Missionaries amaze me. I will never forget a testimony by a missionary couple who left the United States to serve in Japan. They could only take personal items that would fit into one shipping crate. Everything else had to be left behind. The wife shared her story of how she went through her home and decided which belongings they would take with them. The thought from Scripture came to her “Where’s your treasure?”

Kay Arthur, founder of Precept Ministries, shares a similar story about the time she and her family left to serve in Mexico as missionaries. The real test for her came when they held a sale at their home:

We ran an ad in the newspaper that essentially said we were going to Mexico as missionaries and everything in our home was for sale. Although I can’t remember what scripture we used twenty-nine years ago, I do recall including in the ad a biblical basis for “selling it all.” People converged upon our home, looking for bargains. And bargains they found. In the midst of strangers rummaging through my closets and cupboards a friend took me aside and said, “Kay, don’t do this. Don’t sell everything. Just put it in storage. Who knows, God may not let you stay in Mexico!”
Her words jarred me a little. The thought had never occurred to me. To that point, leaving Mexico hadn’t even entered my mind. Yet even as I paused to consider my friend’s counsel, the words of Matthew 6:19 flooded my heart, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures upon earth. . . .” The momentary doubt faded from my mind. Earthly treasures had to go. I could not go to Mexico with my heart in storage.

Are you going through life with your heart in storage? As you responded to the call of the Lord Jesus in your life did you forget that it meant giving up your right to your self and to your things? Sometimes I’m afraid that we miss the joy of the Lord in our life because we are holding onto stuff. In Mark 10:29-30, Jesus said “Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel’s sake, but that he shall receive a hundred times as much now in the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age to come, eternal life.” What a promise! Please pray how the Lord may be urging you to give up stuff for His glory and honor. Praise God!