Cool Cow Bro.

Thanks for this Disney.

Ya know what’s awesome? Treasure. Gold doubloons…Hot bae…Spiritual security…Family history…Our bones and blood were designed to gravitate toward that of great worth and value. In a way, we were all designed to be treasure hunters. How neat is that?! Living life on the cusp of adventure—seeking, savoring, spending things of worth. There’s an air of pompousness, vogue-ness, and thoughtfulness which help to define the treasures of our lives. Ironically enough—through all the thought, hedonism, and work toward our valuables—though in life we are all treasure hunters, very few of us become treasure keepers. And don’t misunderstand what I write. I didn’t say “treasure hoarders.” I said “treasure keepers.” Hoarders are absolutists—meaning the worth they find in something is maintained in itself; each component of value is kept. Keepers are economists—there’s a fluidity to the components of what is valuable; a timeliness that works to substantiate, enlighten, and expose The timeless.

In its nature, to hoard treasure is to limit treasure. Thus is the economy of heaven.

Have you ever bought something and knew you got a bad deal? In the previous blog entry I talked about a trip Luke and I went on to Arizona! It was awesome…except for some of the stupid costs. Example 1: Trent and Luke wait far too long to buy tickets and spend $200 instead of $81. Example 2: Trent is dumb and waits too long to order a rental car. Trent and Luke wait till 3 in the morning for a car and spend over $300 more that allotted. Example 3: Luke spends an inordinate amount of money on SPAM, Vienna Sausages, and apples and ends up eating tacos.

Now, have you ever not bought something and regretted it? Maybe a certain kind of insurance on an amazon order…a signed copy of Titanic featuring Leonardo DiCaprio…the lemon raspberry cookie at Subway…the round trip plane ticket to China for $200?

In my latter Christian years I have spent many an hour reading books or listening to sermons (mainly by Piper and Edwards) which call to attention the Christian’s necessity to treasure God above all else. Jesus talks about treasure a lot too…kind of like a Hebrew soul pirate. With this structure of thought sculpting my formative reading of scripture it is no surprise that the question “How can I better treasure Jesus?” be one of the presidencies of study. Also as a result of this, one of the greatest fears and pains of my walk have been the misuse of increasing the Treasure that Jesus is in my own heart—times where I have spent myself and notions poorly as well as foolish times where I have refused to spend myself. Two passages which speak to the nature of increasing our eternal treasure have caught my attention of late: Galatians 4 and Luke 15. Galatians as a realization and in tangent Luke as a rebuke.

In chapter four Paul is ascribing sonship and thus heirship to believers, using Jesus as the precedent for how we ought to believe, speak, and inherit. An heir is “the owner of everything” and Paul declares us as “no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” Can. We. Take. A. Minute? God—the One who spoke all things into being, from which all things find their worth—has just said that we are heirs to his promises, heirs to everything in the Kingdom. Quite literally we have been given a debit card that is linked to the endless, incorruptible, unstealable treasury of heaven. We have a bottomless pit of happiness, an always flowing fountain of faith, an incorruptible silo of joy. All at our disposal. To pull from whenever we want. How awesome is that?!

Now, Luke 15 is a story you might be familiar with—it’s probably one of Jesus’ most famous stories. The great teacher was lecturing on lost things: a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a couple of lost sons. Long story short, one of the sons—whom we’ll call Archie—gets a little anxious about his inheritance and decides to ask for it from his dad. Jughead—the other brother—stays at home, tending the sheep and so forth. Archie goes and spends all his inheritance in one instance, squandering it on beer and babes. Turmoil strikes and he, with empty pockets, comes home, tail between legs and apology speech in hand. The father sees him in the distance, hikes up his robe, and rushes to embrace the once dead son; following this he puts a ring on his hand, gives him some new threads, and throws a raging party where they kill the fattened calf…not just any fattened calf. THE fattened calf. It was that kind of party.

Late in the evening Jughead rounds the corner and hears his favorite JB song playing and sees all his friends dancing with his brother, eating kabobs, and instagramming the whole thing. Jughead throws a fit, the father tries to calm him down, Jughead starts yelling, and Pops ends the story with the hefty statement, “It was fitting to celebrate and be glad, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.”

There are so many things to glean from this story but I want to take a look at one verse the father brings up, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” How sad of a day it will be when many of us get to heaven realize that what we’re walking into is what we could have been spending all along on earth. What stopped Jughead from throwing himself a party? Nothing. One day we will give an account for not digging deep into Heaven’s treasury, and what will be our response as to why we lived in spiritual poverty when we could have been living in endless spiritual richness?

I think a Calvin Miller quote is appropriate here, “The world is poor because her fortune is buried in the sky and all her treasure maps are of the earth.”

One major question I want to take from this is a question on our spending. I’m about to Dave Ramsay it up. Well…maybe not…but…anyway. Could we make an effort to give away as much of the treasure of heaven as possible? We are heirs to an endless treasure, and yet so many of us fear for some reason to indulge and spend! We sit around and wait for the Father to throw us a party—wait for the Father to give us “visions of His will” or “direction” when these things are clear and ready to go. Let’s throw the party; let’s see how many fattened calves we can eat! Let’s not hoard the spiritual extravagance. It seems that Jughead wasn’t a treasure keeper because he wasn’t a treasure spender. 

Here’s to being a treasure keeper. Here’s to being a treasure spender. Here’s to killing the fattened calf often.