Focus of the Heart

UV 4149/10000 Focus of the Heart For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Luke 12 v 34 What we value most in life occupies our hearts and minds. Jesus is saying that the location of our hearts shift to where our treasure is located and vice versa. If we value money, it will fill the heart, too not just our wallets or bank accounts. It will push out all other important aspects of life like God, salvation, eternity to the background. Therefore, we need to constantly ask ourselves, “What do I value the most in life?” Scripture offers the key and asks us to give priority to God and His kingdom values. We are to value eternal life in Christ over everything else, including our own family or children. We are to value it over health, wealth, pleasure, privilege, position, good name or reputation, security. We must be mentally prepared to sacrifice these in order to obtain eternal life in Christ. Our hearts do not have too much space to accommodate a variety of desires and priorities. We need to choose what we fill it with. The heart is at the cross section of our foremost desires, hopes, beliefs. It is the central place or locus of our existence. Our lives revolve around it. Hence, we need to focus on the locus, Jesus who alone can promise us forgiveness of God and eternal life or salvation. It is our birthright that we should not barter away like Esau for a pot of meat. It is non negotiable, most valuable and we cannot put a price tag on it. Only when the love of God takes a grip on our hearts, will our hearts otherwise described as wicked, beyond cure, be “circumcised”. The unnecessary layers are excised out by the Holy Spirit, the immaculate surgeon of the human heart. The process of emptying the heart of the world and filling it with the Lord, His word, His Spirit is a daily and continuous one. Our hearts are obsessed with what we treasure the most in our lives. The Lord always examines our hearts to see what we are focused or obsessed with. David placed his personal relationship with God reflected in the Psalms far above his political ambition, his wealth, his power, his family, his future. This is the reason that despite commission of virtual adultery and murder, David is extolled as one whose heart is after God. If we fill our hearts with valuable wisdom, the word of Christ, we will regard all other gain like St Paul as mere waste or garbage. We are ready to even stake our lives on it.