Where Your Heart Is

Where Your Heart Is

Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.

Matthew 6:19-21

SINCE HAVING KIDS, my wife and I don’t exchange Christmas presents. I’m just too cheap. But before she gave birth to the fruit of my loins, we used to each have a budget of $100 to spend on each other for Christmas. One year Jen told me she wanted a diamond tennis bracelet. I went to the store and the clerk showed me the diamond tennis bracelet I could get for $100. I stared at it and asked, “Are you sure those are diamonds? It looks more like little pieces of . . . glitter.”

I bought it and gave it to Jen on Christmas morning. She exclaimed, “Just what I wanted, a glitter tennis bracelet!”

A few days later the clasp on it broke. I wasn’t surprised. I took it back in to get fixed. The day before, Jen’s grandma had given each of us $100. It was her annual present, and the only money we each had every year to splurge on ourselves. As I waited for the clasp to be fixed, I noticed the $200 tennis bracelets. You could actually see the diamonds!

A few hours later I handed Jen her tennis bracelet. She looked at it and asked, “Wait? Did the glitter grow?”

I smiled, “Actually, I got you a better one.”

She was confused. “Where did you get the money? Wait, you used my grandma’s money, didn’t you? Why? What . . . what made you do this?”

I told her the truth. “Love made me do it.”

All Kinds of Reasons

I want you to think about giving. Like giving . . . money . . . to God, through the church. People don’t like to hear about giving, but God talks about it—a lot. In fact, check out the number of times these important words appear in the Bible:

• Believe: 272 times
• Pray: 374 times
• Love: 714 times
• Give: 2,162 times^a

And that’s just the word give. Often the word you’ll see in the Bible is tithe. The word tithe means “tenth”; to tithe is to give God the first tenth of whatever you bring in. You’ll also see the word offering. An offering is anything you give to God above ten percent.

We’re to give generously to God, and there are all kinds of reasons to do so. For instance:

It’s God’s money, not ours. We think of it as our money, but God says it’s his.^b The only reason we have money is because he’s given us the ability to earn it. So really, we’re not giving God some of our money; God lets us keep most of his money, and we give him back a little bit of it.

God has commanded us to give money back to him. All through the Old Testament he commands people to give him ten percent.^c In the New Testament he sends his Son Jesus^d to live and die for us, and then he commands us to give generously.^e All along people had great reasons to give generously back to God, but now we have a much greater reason.

God will bless us for tithing.^f If I have a choice of God’s blessings or ten percent of my money, I’m taking God’s blessings every day!

Giving increases our faith. It helps us to trust in God more and in ourselves less. It’s scary at first deciding to live off of only ninety percent of our incomes, but not only does it demonstrate faith, it grows our faith as we see how God provides for us.

Tithing helps set our priorities. God tells us that we’re to give him the first ten percent.^g Not our leftovers, but the first check we write. When we do that, it helps to clarify that God is most important in our lives.

Giving to God allows us to have an eternal impact with our money. We have lots of choices for how to spend our money. Most of what we spend it on ends up in a toilet or a trash dump. What we give to God through the church goes toward his mission of bringing his lost children home to him and to an eternity in heaven. That is what I want to spend my money on!

The Love Reason

There are all kinds of reasons to give generously back to God, but right now I just want you to focus on one. One I haven’t mentioned yet: love. Giving expresses my love for God, it helps me experience God’s love for me, and it grows my love for God.

That may sound odd to you, but it’s straight from Jesus.

He says, “Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them.”^h We’ve been commanded to be generous toward God with our money. Those who love Jesus will “accept” and “obey” that command. And because they love God in that way, God’s love will be revealed to them. Those who do it experience God’s love.

Jesus also says, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.”ⁱ In other words, you put your money into what you care about, and you care about what you put your money into.

Isn’t it true that you put your money into what you care about? In fact, I could know a ton about you by looking at your checkbook and your credit card statement.

And isn’t it also true that when you put money into something, you start to care about it more? Like if you have an old clunker car, you don’t care about it. If you pick up your friend and he has some food and asks, “Can I eat in your car?” you’d laugh and say, “Eat in it? You can butcher cows in it for all I care.” But if you go out and spend some serious money on a new car you would tell your friend, “No, you can’t eat in my car! In fact, I don’t want you to even breathe in my car!” When your money goes to God, you begin to care more and more about him.

The inverse is true too. If we care so much about our money that we won’t give it, then we lose a significant opportunity to connect with God and grow. In fact, it moves us in the opposite direction from God. Jesus says, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate one and love the other, or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”^j The Bible even says that the love of money can pull us away from our faith. “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.”^k

Give generously back to God. Don’t try to figure out the minimum you have to give him; see how much you can give him. You will be so glad you did. Other people might think you’re crazy, but when they look at you funny and ask why, just smile and say, “Love made me do it.”

Now What?

• Read 2 Corinthians 9:1-15.
• What do you learn about giving from this passage? Take some time to create a plan for giving. How much will you give God? What is generous? When and how will you increase your giving?
• Money often provides the most competition with God for our worship, and it is often the last thing people will really give to God. Take some time to pray about your finances. Ask God to reveal your heart to you and where it needs to change when it comes to money. Ask him to help you make him a higher priority than money and what you can buy with it.