This past weekend, we kicked off our Gener-US series by looking at Matthew 6:19-24. In verse 21, there’s a fairly well known and often misquoted or misunderstood sentence:

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

If you’ve been around churches for any length of time, you’ve probably heard this quote from Jesus before. But maybe you haven’t thought about the order of the quote and how potentially significant it is.

You might be tempted to think that Jesus is saying, “We all care about something. So put your treasure where your heart is.” You could even come to think of it as Jesus’ way of saying, “Put your money where your mouth is.”

But that’s not what Jesus says at all. He says that wherever we put our treasure, our heart will follow. Look at the verb tenses in the sentence (sorry to take you back to English class).

“... where your treasure is …”

“... your heart will be …”

Jesus is saying that our heart follows our treasure, not the other way around. We make decisions every day about what to invest our resources in—and it’s not even just money.

Whatever we choose to invest in is going to set the direction of our hearts.

Here’s why that’s so powerful. Jesus is saying that we have the ability to set the direction of our affections. We can choose the destination of our heart … today. And the way we choose that is by how we invest the resources God has given us—our money, our time, and our abilities.

What are you going to care about tomorrow? What’s going to be most important to you in 2 years, 5 years, or 10 years? The answer to those questions is found in where you are investing your resources today.

Jesus gave us an incredibly powerful insight in this sentence that we sometimes breeze right past (or completely misunderstand). We want to be a community that understands this truth … and invests what God has given us in things that will last.

We’ll see you this weekend for part 2 of Gener-US!