Comfort & Counsel

Home  Articles  Site map

Pointers along the way #560

The treasure in our heart
- Jacob Ninan

What our mind runs to most of the time is what is very special to our heart. A man may be at work for many hours a day and his mind busy most of that time with his work. But during that time and afterwards his mind keeps running to something that is precious him the most. We all have legitimate things that occupy our mind for the moment or for a certain period of time because of their importance or urgency for us. But when we look at ourselves over a longer period of time we can identify things that are of long term interest to us and which form a priority for our life. Jesus called it the treasure in our heart (Mt.6:21). A godly man treasures God's word in his heart (Ps.119:11), meditates on it, and is concerned about how his practical life aligns with God's ways, whatever he does. For a worldly man, his mind values above all how he might get pleasure, acquire more wealth or fame, etc. His treasure is in this world. The treasures of this world will pass away one day (1Jn.2:15-17). Jesus tells us to seek for the treasure that will remain in eternity (Jn.6:27).

We may call ourselves Christians or believers in Christ. But when we honestly check out the treasure in our heart and mind, as we have understood above, if we don't find Christ there, we would be fooling ourselves. If our attention is on something else, if the thing that actually gives us delight in practical life is some pleasure of this world and not Christ, if what we want to enjoy when we have some free time is something God is not happy with or is not connected with Christ, if we think of Christ as a burden that has to be borne with for the sake of getting to heaven -- are we true to call ourselves children of God?

We may have fooled ourselves, or some preacher may have fooled us into thinking that God's grace is so great that all we need to do to enter in to receive it is to 'accept Jesus'. If the grace we know is the genuine one, it will surely cause changes in our lifestyle (Ti.2:11,12). The plain-spoken apostle James said that a living faith would produce works (Jas.2:17,18). When Jesus said we could judge false teachers from their fruit, doesn't the same standard apply to us too (Mt.7:15,16)? What a shock there will be if we believed a lie about our salvation and finally found ourselves in hell! We have to make sure now that what we have believed and experienced is the genuine salvation that Jesus came with. There isn't going to be a 'second chance' to choose the right way (He.9:27).

It is not some wicked person out there in the world about whom we are speaking. It will happen to many people who call themselves followers of Jesus. Satan has succeeded in distorting people's ideas about salvation so that they think they are saved when they are far from it! We need to enter through the Door and not try to climb over some other way. Repent and believe in Jesus for the forgiveness of sins. Make sure we have fruit to show from our repentance (Mt.3:8).

Index

Subscribe to the 'Pointers along the way' mailing list
Tweet