Where Are You Investing Your Treasures?

When Karen and I married, I was obsessed with two things: golf and work. They consumed most of my physical and emotional energy. At the end of my workday or after a game of golf, I had little time or energy left for Karen, for our children, or for God.

The result was a family life that was miserable and tense. I would insist that I loved God, Karen, and our kids before all else, but I’d been growing distant and emotionally separated from each of them.

Karen could tell, and when she’d had enough, she confronted me. She called me a hypocrite and accused me of saying things I didn’t really mean. I retaliated by reminding her of all the great things I did for our family. It made me angry. I felt like a domestic martyr.

Eventually I realized the depth of my ignorance and, in repentance, experienced one of the greatest turning points in my life. I committed my priorities to God and my family above work and golf. Whatever success my marriage and family have had since then began when I finally got my priorities straight.

Biblical priorities are made evident by how we spend our time, energy and money. If we give the first of these things to God, God remains first in our lives. Our relationship with Him flourishes.

When we don’t give the best to Him, our relationship suffers and stops growing. There is never an exception to this truth.

In Matthew 6:21, Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart is also.” The Greek word for “heart” used in this verse is kardia, which means “our inner self or the seat of our emotions.” The word translated “treasure” literally means “treasury”—the place where we keep our most valuable things.

What Jesus is saying is that our real feelings and focus will be wherever we decide to put the things we treasure—time, energy, and money. It is impossible to separate your treasury and your heart.

If you give the best of your treasures to your job, then your work will get the majority of your feelings and focus. If your feelings or focus are given to a sport or hobby, then that is your treasury.

And if your treasury is found in God and your family, then God and family will receive your primary passions, desires, and emotions.

Before God convicted me about my priorities, I had a strong mental and emotional connection to my job and to golf, but minimal desires for my family. How did things change? It wasn’t that I had a magical, emotional experience. It was because I made a decision of the will.

I decided to change the place where I was investing my primary treasures. I made a deliberate effort to give the best of my treasures to God and my family—and then my emotions followed. To my surprise, I fell deeply in love with God. I fell deeply in love with my family.

Where are your emotions? Where are you giving your best? If you are investing in the wrong place, repent before God and your family. Make a change. Re-prioritize, because the rewards far outweigh the cost. I am living proof.