Is your
heart where it should be?
“Do not lay up
for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where
thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,
where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and
steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The lamp
of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body
will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be
full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how
great is that darkness! No one can serve two masters; for either he will
hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:19-24).
WHEN teacher
Cheng Boon Wah, goes for check-ups, doctors invariably tell him everything
is fine after putting their stethoscopes to the right side of his chest.
That's because Mr Cheng's heart is found on the right - or rather, wrong -
side of his body. Mr Cheng suffers from a rare congenital condition called
dextrocardia, where the heart is not where it should be.
In Matthew 6,
we read of the problem of our spiritual hearts not being where they should
be. Jesus brings up two big temptations we all face as believers that
distract us and pull us away from the importance and the satisfaction of
being wholehearted in our relationship with God the Father. The first
temptation we see in chapter 6 is the religious man doing his works before
man to receive the praise of man instead of doing them in secret, where
only God the Father knows. Jesus says that if we seek the praise of men,
we have our reward, but if we seek to glorify God, the Father will reward
us openly. The temptation is to seek to be noticed, to be put on a high
pedestal as one who is religious, and to gain the praise of men.
The second
temptation we face as believers is the temptation of being like the world
in seeking treasures on this earth. So often, we look at the things of
this earth and say to ourselves, “If only I had that, then I would have be
all set.” We seek to find security and satisfaction in temporary things
instead of what we already have in our relationship with God the Father
through Jesus Christ. Both of these temptations demand our attention, for
both can distract us from what truly matters – our relationship with God
the Father.
We need examine
ourselves often to see if our heart is in the right place. Do we depend on
God daily? Do we acknowledge that all we have and are is by His mercy and
grace? Do we live as His grateful servants, yielding to His will? Only as
we recognise the importance of genuine humility and acknowledge our
dependence on Him can we have a heart that’s ‘in the right place.’
For where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew
6:21
