When we sold our house in Dothan, AL we began packing up our belongings and had multiple garage sales. After the final garage sale, we decided that whatever was left in the garage would be donated to the Rescue Mission. There was some really good stuff in that garage that was difficult to part with. The problem was that all our household possessions needed to fit in a single storage unit and even though we didn’t know where we would be moving, we knew that a moving company would charge us by weight. We had to part with things that at one time we thought we never would. Treasured items found a new home.
Some of us are living under the costly weight of worry and its time we parted with it. We keep worry around like we choose to accumulate treasures on earth. It’s probably because both worry and wealth share a connection.
We fall prey to the false belief that our treasures on earth we will always have, they are what can bring us our greatest security for tomorrow, and are our greatest catalyst for personal change and satisfaction.
Do I have enough for? Am I successful enough? What will happen to my stuff? Will I have enough for tomorrow? When your possessions are your greatest treasure then they become your greatest worry. When your lack of possessions is your greatest worry then worry is your greatest misery.
Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount that the rich are not to focus on their definition of success and the poor are not to focus on their misery.
Jewish tradition believed that a person’s eyes illuminated the world around them. Radiant eyes represented the vitality of life. Jesus says that eyes illuminate the heart. What you focus on is where your loyalty lies. What you focus on expands in your heart.
Focusing on money and possessions expands the darkness in your heart. Greed and covetousness grow like weeds in the landscape of your inner person.
I recently decided that I had enough of the weeds that had overtaken my backyard. So I decided to pull them all up one by one. The neighbor’s kids and my own kids got involved. They were a big help but if I had not decided to pull them, then the job would not have been completed.
You have to decide what you want to grow in your heart. You have to decide if you want to pull some weeds. All the worry in the world and all the possessions in the world would not be able to get the weeds out of my backyard.
Worry changes nothing. And wealth can move the goal posts of how you define success. It took the right focus and the right action to make a change in my backyard. And it took some help. You can choose today to pull the weeds of greed and covetousness and water your proverbial yard with faith in God. He is the help you need.
Your soul is more valuable than a house full of stuff, or a storage building packed full, or a well-manicured yard. Your soul is more valuable than the clothes on your back. Entrust yourself to God through faith and God will provide for you.
When God is your master you will not be led astray by false idols and counterfeit gods. God will lead you according to the righteousness He provides you with through faith in Him. God imputes you with His righteousness so that you will seek his ways, first.
When God imputes righteousness to you through faith then you impart His righteousness in your life and you depart from the trappings of greed, covetousness, and worry.
My family’s possessions sat in a storage unit for months as we bounced around from place to place, home to home. We lived a little while in my childhood home until a tree fell through the master bedroom during a freak windstorm and we were forced to move.
Friends took us in and my family of five lived in their bonus room above their garage. From there we moved in with relatives in Georgia. I did not know what tomorrow would bring. We were looking for work, we were looking for a permanent place to live.
My worldly measures for success and wealth were challenged and reshaped by these experiences. I worried a lot. I prayed a lot. I hoped a lot.
I worried but we didn’t worry our way out of that particular struggle. We didn’t buy our way out either. We trusted that God would make a way.
Do you know what tomorrow holds for the heart that worries? More worry.
My family did not know what God’s way would look like so we decided to trust. We had a confident hope.
Do you know what tomorrow holds for a heart that chooses to trust in God? God. With faith, God gleams as your treasure when the sun rises on tomorrow. Even when tomorrow has enough trouble of its own.
With God as your treasure, tomorrow is not a cause for worry, tomorrow is your treasured place.
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Jovan preaches for the Littleton Church of Christ near Denver, Colorado. Visit here to listen to sermons preached at the Littleton Church.