What's your treasure and where is it?

They say that every picture tells a story and so last week I asked the ladies and gentlemen to bring in their favourite photographs and tell us the story behind them. We had quite a collection, May had brought in a photograph that her great-grandson had done for her, she said she had been feeling useless, ‘because you do when you get to my age!’ but the photograph had so encouraged her and shown her that God has not finished with her, in His eyes she is not useless, and she gave God the glory for what she is still able to do, which is to be an encouragement to others. 

Sandra showed us photograph of her husband holding their adopted son on the first day they had him home and it reminded us that all those who are God’s children are adopted into His family.

When you read scripture do you try and picture it? 

I read from John 1: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

I asked the ladies if they could see themselves in this picture, can you see yourself in this picture, are you a child of God, adopted into His family? When we become a child of God then we should make sure that we develop into what God wants us to be. There is only one way in which we can belong to God and that is through Jesus Christ and His sacrifice on the cross. He took our punishment for our sins.

After the wonderful collection of photographs we had last week I decided this week to ask the ladies if they had ever been collectors of anything. The answers were many and varied, stamps, paper weights, traction engines, keyrings, mugs, pens, badges, fox ornaments and even reptiles. One of our ladies had some very interesting stories about her and her sons reptile collection, she went into great detail how they hatched out six boar constrictor eggs, and how they had all kinds of reptiles the faces of the ladies sitting next to her were a picture! 

 

I used to collect jugs, teddies, ducks and eggs, collecting eggs was my job when I worked on a farm. :) I found a book recently that had a collection of sayings, Ann Frank said “Whoever is happy will make others happy too”. We read in Luke about the tax collector, Zacchaeus, whose treasure was money and he had spent most of his time ripping people off in order to make himself rich. But when he met Jesus all that changed and he gave the money back with interest.

Luke 5:27-32

Dorie said it reminded her of the song we sang when we were children so of course we had to have a chorus of ‘now Zacchaeus was a very little man’ with actions.

It is wonderful to collect things, to have an interest or hobby but when these things take the place of Jesus in our hearts then we are in trouble. Would you be willing to give up your treasure? Jesus asks us to forsake all and follow Him, and we will have treasure in heaven. We can lose our earthly treasure, they can get stolen or broken, but the treasure God has for us in heaven is everlasting that is certainly worth giving everything up for. Matthew 6: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.