What Makes All the Difference

What is the focus of your life? Is it obtaining some bright and shiny thing here on earth? Or stockpiling silver and gold? Or developing a self-generated autonomy or infamy? Or finally gaining financial freedom? Is it in possessing other people’s possessions?

What is the treasure that you seek? Is it the siren call of recognition; the blindness of ambition? The friendless waste of popularity? The empty case of insincerity?

The answer will reveal the true condition of your heart. The One who knows your heart knows the answer better than you do. If you lie and say God when He is not your sole desire, it only gets worse for you. You will be miserable until you with the thronging masses fall at the feet of Jesus and cry Holy, Holy, Holy are You Lord God Almighty! Not until you bow fully will you fully appreciate the depth to which the King went to rescue your soul from fiery hell and everlasting torment. Not until you recognize and acknowledge His right to rule over you and you assent to it and welcome it. When that happens you are then seeking treasure in heaven. When the knees fall and the heart breaks you are closer than when you ran headlong into a sea of charging voices hell-bent on destruction. You are more free yoked to Jesus than when you ran for years un-tethered, but tracked by love and held by the Invisible Hand.

And still you ran and now run to all that glitters as if it could satisfy. It is not so much that where your treasure is your heart will follow after. Your heart is already there. The location of the treasure reveals the location of your heart. The Spirit’s motive-seeking GPS is honed in on your position; you were being tracked by the Hound of Heaven, but fiercely loyal to yourself you react to that knowledge with an unknown coldness. You are undone, you have been found out for the impostor that you are. Pretender unmasked, the curtain pulled back, Oz exposed. Your heart, once freed from tyranny’s power went through the valley of indecision and compromise, to emerge scratched and bruised and beaten down and not ready for the battle.

Time has taken a toll and worthless idols have been exposed and still you wonder how He knew. You know He knows all and yet you do all that is within your power to act on your own behalf, a jailhouse lawyer trying his first case, the penalty worse than you ever imagined. The Judge is at the door, so release the buried past and welcome Him in once again – the Lover of your soul knows. You went down another road more worn than the less-traveled and now you live to regret it…but He lives to remove it. It rings in your ears, the cry of wasted years, last gasp of broken promises. Undone, needy, dead.

The day of salvation dawns unhindered, the night of sin is gone; you are welcomed. The battle has been won, the debt has been undone, the stone has been removed, grace has covered all; mercy falls like rain on parched land. Death was tasted for you; the Best was given as collateral, fully identified with the fallen; completely at home in heaven. Thank God, the blood cleanses. It makes all the difference.