Strongholds (Part 2)
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.
Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6:19–34)
We have been talking about strongholds. In 2 Corinthians 10, Paul defines strongholds as thoughts that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God. (2 Corinthians 10: 4-5) They are thoughts that contradict who God is. These fortresses are lies that become ingrained in our lives, control our lives, and stand in the way of our relationship with God.
We are exploring some fortresses Jesus mentions in the Sermon on the Mount. It is the perfect place to expose lies that stand against Christ. In our last article we talked about one of the biggest, a judgmental heart. In this study, we are going to examine another big one: fear and worry. Someone once counted all the commands in the Bible and found the one most mentioned was “Don’t be afraid!” The next time you are lying awake at night worrying about something, stop and remind yourself God is opposed to what you are doing. It won’t be enough, but it is a start. Jesus gave the keys to freedom in His discourse on worry and fear in Matthew six.
The Lord came at this bulwark from many perspectives. He appealed to reason. He reminded His disciples that God cares for even the smallest things in His creation. How will He not care for us? It was His way of saying, “God’s got this!” Next, He reminded them of the futility of worry. We can’t add a single cubit to our stature, so worry accomplishes nothing.
Much of our anxiety comes from illusions. Michel de Montaigne, a French philosopher, once said:
“My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.” —Michel de Montaigne
Studies on worry and fear found only 8% to 15% of the things we worry about ever happen. So, our fears and worries are mostly imaginations, like the boogeyman we suppose is hiding under our bed.
Reason is powerful, but it is often not enough, so Jesus also looked at the heart. You might wonder why I included Jesus’s words on our heart’s treasure in our opening passage. It seems unrelated to the passage that follows, but it isn’t. First, Jesus taught about how the heart follows its treasure, then about worry. The word “therefore” in-between the two sections (verse 25) shows they are tied together.
Worry and fear happen when we have the wrong treasure in our heart. We believe our treasure completes us. If we have enough of it, we will be full. The things we value give us worth and sometimes define us. For example, some people’s treasure is money. To these, riches can make their life full and give them security. It also provides a way to measure themselves. The rich are more important and have more value than the poor. As media mogul Ted Turner once said:
Life’s a game. Money is how we keep score. —Ted Turner
Jesus spoke of two types of treasure: the finite and the infinite. If our treasure is finite, we will worry. ‘Thieves break in and steal” This was Jesus’s way of saying, “Stuff happens.” He did not say if we trust God, we will never suffer loss. Rather, He said if your treasure is finite, your treasure is uncertain. If God is our treasure, He will never leave you or forsake you, and no one can take infinite treasure from you. If your treasure is Christ, you walk above worry and fear.
It all comes down to how you define life. Is it what happens to you, good or bad, or is it Christ? If life’s measure is good and bad, we will constantly be afraid that life will turn bad. Likewise, most of our relationship with God will be spent asking God to make life good and to take away the bad.
If our heart’s treasure is Christ, we won’t seek God to give us the life we want. That will become secondary and far less necessary. We will walk with Him through it all, the good and the bad. His company makes our life full. Our heart’s desire won’t be for God’s hand, but to see His face. Revelation, God unveiling himself, will become our joy, and His love for us the measure of our worth. We will lose our finite measures of identity, and we will look to Christ to find out who we are.
It is very simple. Jesus summed it up, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” If life is bad, then seek the kingdom. Is life good? Do the same. If you follow this simple order of life, all these things will be added to you. In other words, God’s got this, so be about the work of knowing Him. Finite blessing will follow. I have never seen this not be true in my life.
