To Encourage You

Matthew 19:29 “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”

If you were guaranteed a 100-fold return on an investment, would you make that investment?  It would be pretty foolish not to. It would really be foolish to not invest in something that was guaranteed if given the opportunity. 

But then, any guarantee is only as good as the guarantor. Again, as we see businesses folding all the time, any guarantee from anyone should be viewed as possibly suspect. That’s why the verse above is so wonderful.  Here we have a guarantee from the One who owns everything and if He ever needed anything else that doesn’t now exist, He could just speak it into existence.  There is no guarantor that could ever be remotely more trustworthy than that! 

But that’s exactly the assurance the believer has regarding anything He places in the Lord’s hands.  It’s called “laying up treasures in heaven.” Whenever we lay up treasures on earth, such as by investing our money in the stock market, we do so to forego the use of that money for a time with the hope of a greater return in the future.  Yet for any treasure laid up on earth, there will ultimately be loss.  Jesus warned us with these words: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19).  Of course, this isn’t the limit of bad things that can happen to such treasures, and we all know that at some point we will lose it all, because “you can’t take it with you.” 

But for the believer, you really can take it with you. You can lay up treasures in heaven “where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20). Just as a person can lay aside possessions on earth and forego their use for a time in exchange for an earthly return on that investment that they can enjoy so long as they remain on this earth, so a person can lay up their possessions in heaven, foregoing their use while they are on earth, but for a much greater return in heaven for all eternity.  Many believers have done this.  In fact, they’ve foregone more than their money as they’ve put it to use for the kingdom of heaven. Some have even lost their closest family members who have rejected them because of their Christian faith. And as difficult as it might be to understand, the God who gave us our families in the first place has promised us that He will more than make up for such incredible sacrifices in the end – a hundredfold! 

So, how’s your long-term investment strategy going? What are your ultimate goals?  Are they limited to what can be attained on this earth and all its inherent limits, or is your focus on heaven and the eternal guarantees of that most glorious place? May God help us to invest wisely, sacrifice wisely, and treasure wisely all that He has given us.  And the wisest way to do that is to follow the counsel of Wisdom incarnate, the One Who rules heaven and earth.