Kingdom Practice (1)

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  Matthew 6.21

We are what we love
In a very real sense, we are what we love. This is as true of those who have made the Kingdom turn as it is of everybody else. What we treasure in our heart will be what we seek in life and what we become in fact.

Love is that affection which, more than any other, gathers together our most powerful feelings and focuses them on a single object. It doesn’t matter what that object is. It could be something as mundane as material wealth, fame or esteem, or even the possession of power over others. Whatever we love the most will be that which our affections point to, strain toward, and eagerly desire to possess. What we love is what we will treasure, and what we treasure will determine who we are.

This “treasure” will fill our minds day by day with visions, dreams, and carefully-laid plans for how we may acquire that for which we long. Love can obviously make us crazy – it can lead us to do strange and unpredictable things as we press, push, and lunge in the direction of what we love the most.

What we most love, therefore, tells us something about the condition of our hearts. If the best part of our spiritual and physical energies are invested in making a good living – if being materially well-off is the treasure we seek – then this will be evidence of a heart which believes it can only be satisfied by the enjoyment of things and the realization of every whim. Can such a heart practice meaningful love to another person?

Even more important, can such a heart really love God?

Where your treasure is, your heart will be. What you love, you will long for, strive after, and pursue until you have as much of it as will bring contentment to your soul.

But that’s just the problem with things, isn’t it? They never really satisfy because they never pan out quite the way we’d hoped; and we seem never to be able to have enough of the thing we desire most. Think: Imelda Marcos and shoes, Wilt Chamberlain and women, or Bernie Madoff and other people’s money.

What kind of love?
Love can drive people crazy. But it can also make us sane – not only sane, but filled with joy, nestled in peace, brimming with hope, and given to caring selflessly for others. What kind of love, we might ask, can do so much for our yearning hearts?

The love God commands of us when He instructs us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. Of the three great theological virtues – faith, hope, and love – love is certainly the greatest. Love gives rise to faith and hope. It nurtures and sustains them, causing them to grow stronger so that they feed the cardinal virtues – courage, wisdom, temperance, and justice – and bring them to ever-higher states of maturity.

Grow in love and you will grow in faith and hope; grow in these, and all the virtues will come to fruition as they should.

When our greatest passion is not the fleeting fame or fortune of this fickle world, but the unchanging and unfading glory of the living God, then our hearts will be tuned and strengthened as God intends, so that we might truly live in love. Know God, and love Him – this is where practicing the Kingdom begins. Loving God we will surely love our neighbors as well. Loving God follows from desiring Him and leads to all other Kingdom virtues and practices. If we can discipline our hearts to love God purely, supremely, and consistently, all the other aspects of our lives will come together as they should.

Loving God
In Scripture the command to love God supremely takes a variety of forms: “Know the Lord.” “Seek the Lord.” “Seek His Kingdom.” “Follow Me.” These are just a few of the various ways that Scripture defines our quest for this most desirable treasure.

Love is the greatest of the virtues. When we are loving God and loving our neighbor, we are living the virtuous life and practicing the Kingdom turn. And when love is our treasure – the true and selfless love which God commands – all the affections of our hearts will be lined up precisely as the Lord intends.

Next steps: What does it mean to love God? To love our neighbors as ourselves? Ask a few friends to explain these and to give examples of how they try to fulfill them. What about you? Is love the treasure you seek above all else?

T. M. Moore

This week’s study, Kingdom Practice, is the final installment of an eight-part series on The Kingdom Turn, and is available as a free download. T. M. has written two books to complement this eight-part series. You can order The Kingship of Jesus by clicking here, and The Gospel of the Kingdom by clicking here.

Did you miss today’s Crosfigell? Comghall, the great 6^th-century head of the missions monastery at Bangor, exhorts us to “stand firm” in the Lord. Sign-up for this thrice-weekly podcast/newsletter at the website, www.ailbe.org.

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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.