Cherished Treasures & Bad Masters

Good morning, Beautiful People! 

God is serious about us. The greatest truth of the Bible is that God is progressively drawing near to the hearts of men and women. The biblical narrative displays the God of reconciliation desiring oneness with us. I had never experienced a love like that until I stopped looking at Jesus as a guest of my heart and asked Him to be the proprietor. We create room in our hearts for places, persons, and things that carry a weight of significance. These cherished treasures have a way of guiding and controlling our actions. If we are not careful, these cherished treasures assume the position of idolatry. Psychology suggests that we can’t have two competing beliefs occupy our minds. This creates cognitive dissonance—a cognitive discomfort. Coincidently, Jesus said this first before any psychologist (Leon Festinger) landed on the novel concept. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24 NIV). Now, Jesus says this from the Mount of Blessing in the most excellent sermon ever preached!

How Jesus starts this sermon is important in understanding Matthew 6:24. Cognitively and spiritually, we are unable to have two masters/beliefs. We have to choose one or the other. Before understanding this and actualizing it, we first need to accept the simple truth presented in Matthew 5:3. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” We are unable to create room for Jesus when our hearts are so rich with cherished treasures that make us slaves to them. The blessing of Matthew 5:3 is the freedom to bankrupt our hearts of any “masters” that cause us to be alienated from God and each other. The blessed hope of seeing the desperately of our souls is knowing and believing that God is in the business of making us like His Son—Jesus Christ. The only way we can make room for Jesus is by bankrupting our hearts of any illegitimate masters through the power of the Holy Spirit