Where Is Your Treasure?

My wife and I spent many years gathering stuff, of course we gathered debts to go along with that stuff. Now I’ll be honest I was the spender in our relationship,

What was funny is all that stuff didn’t really make us happy. In fact the debt that came along with the stuff nearly destroyed our marriage and nearly took my life. This is one reason that the passage from Romans 13:8-14 is so meaningful for me, the debt we had nearly destroyed our lives.

I thought that being a good provider meant providing lots of stuff for my family.

I thought that working long hours showed my family that I valued them.

I was wrong.

The first question you have to ask yourself if you want to learn to be a good steward is: What Do I Really Treasure?

Our homes have nearly doubled in square footage in the last 60 years growing in size and amenities. Despite that we have nearly 2.3 billion square feet of rentable self-storage space in the United States. We have so much stuff that our homes can’t hold it even though they’ve grown in size.

But our treasure is not found in stuff.

This post isn’t an indictment on stuff. In fact, now that my wife and I are out of debt we have gotten more stuff that we put to very good use. But in spending two years 11 months getting out of debt we found out that the stuff we had, this wasn’t our treasure, it wasn’t what we really valued.

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The five categories were:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

You’ll notice how none of those are talking about the things they have acquired on earth—the kind of treasure that moth and rust can destroy, the kind that thieves can break in and steal.

People in their last moments talk about their family, friends, moments with God, children they have taught, mission trips they have taken. They talk about vacations and laughter, and they share stories that are amusing and meaningful. They talk less about salaries and more about promises shared with God and with people.

You know I’ve mentioned time and time again that Stewardship is about more than money and this series is about where you are investing your life, but there’s no denying that it’s also about money. That’s because Jesus talked about money. In fact, Jesus talked more about money than about heaven and hell combined. Jesus talked more about money than anything except the Kingdom of God. Eleven of Jesus’ thirty-nine parables are about money. One of every seven verses in the Gospel of Luke talks about money. Even though Jesus lived long ago and taught people that lived in a different part of the world and lived a different way he still spent much of his time talking about money.

Why did Jesus talk so much about money?