These verses deal with the real life issues of accumulating wealth and caring for our physical needs. Yet there is something even more basic underlying these verses. Jesus is asking us to review our priorities.

    Your felt needs in earning a living and working toward professional advancement reflect your priorities. On the simplest level, you must decide whether you will place the highest importance on earning enough money for your perceived needs, or if you will place the highest priority on trusting Jesus for your future.

    There are two issues at stake. The first considers our resources of time and energy, and the second considers our perception of need. In the first case, we must recognize our finite resources. We have only a limited amount of time, physical energy, and emotional drive, and we can only spend it once. Our priority will determine whether we invest our resources for ourselves or for Jesus.

    The second issue is our perception of need. Our society and the sub-groups to which we belong (including our Christian sub-culture) condition us to have certain expectations of both present and future need. These perceived needs may or may not be true needs. After much preparation for health, retirement years and so on, God may lead in a direction that bypasses our perceived needs. For example, an early death may eliminate future financial needs, or His way of providing for them may be entirely different than what we expected. Our perception of what we will need in the future may be quite different from how God actually intends to provide for us.

    Consider the issue of priorities in Matthew 6:24:

    "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

    Jesus is not saying that a believer should not work to earn a living. He is emphasizing a limitation of the finite human mind. We cannot establish two parallel yet conflicting priorities. Given the same finite resources of time and energy, we cannot have equal priorities of gaining wealth and serving God. We must give one a place of priority while letting the other become secondary. If we choose to put serving God first, we must entrust Him with the consequences of that decision. If we choose to make earning an income or advancing professionally our first priority, we have relegated serving God to a subordinate position.

    The fact that you have a secular job does not necessarily mean that earning money is your highest priority. Many believers have successfully used secular incomes to enable them to serve Jesus, having purposefully restricted their employment so that it becomes a means to this end. Ultimately, only you will know your own motivation.

    Nor does Christian employment confirm that God has been given the highest priority. There is ample opportunity to serve money in full-time Christian service. A pastor may hesitate to confront sin or a lack of zeal in his congregation in order to avoid jeopardizing his salary. It is a common practice for older individuals in full-time ministries to continue working in order to qualify for retirement benefits even when they are no longer effective. There is also much opportunity to serve money in the huge business enterprise associated with selling Christian books and merchandise and speaking or performing publicly.

    Consider this example of priorities. Let's say that your physician recommends that you begin taking a certain medication because studies show that it reduces the death rate. You are now faced with a very simple issue of priorities. You can trust medical science to prolong your life, or you can trust Jesus to give—or take—your life as He pleases.^[1]

^[1] I am artificially making this example one in which you must choose one of only two options. A third possible option would be that God could certainly lead you to use medication even though you were fully trusting Him. (See the qualification to conventional means and primary recourse in Chapter 1.) Nonetheless, I am giving the example as having only two options because I want you to understand that, at times, God may give you an opportunity to act in faith in exactly this way.

    Say that you decide to take the medication without first praying about it. Then say that the medication actually prolongs your life by four years. Would four years of additional life be of greater value to you in Heaven than living the remainder of eternity with the knowledge that you did not trust Jesus in this area?

    I have personally decided that I must always make decisions based upon what will be best for me in Heaven rather than what appears to be most expedient here on earth. I am a fallible human being with imperfect knowledge and judgment. Yet, after I get to Heaven, I will always be more satisfied looking back on my imperfect human decisions that were based on faith in Jesus rather than on those based on my trust in human institutions.

    How willing are you to take Jesus' teaching in Matthew 6 literally? How do you want to account for your responses when you stand before Him in Heaven?

    "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also^[2] (19-22).

^[2] Have you ever experienced the thrill of realizing that you are truly living as though your treasure is in Heaven? Have you ever become aware that you are genuinely more concerned with your investments for Jesus' sake than you are about expenditures for your own well-being?

    "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

    "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own" (25-34).

    These verses represent a high standard for anyone contemplating living by faith. Jesus expects us to trust God rather than our own resources for our essential needs in life. Are you willing to ask for His direction in this area of living by faith?

    I often puzzled over the meaning of verses 22-23. They did not seem connected to the rest of the passage. However, if Jesus is using the word "eye" as a colloquialism for "priority," then the verses fit the context perfectly. The passage would read,

    The lamp of the body is [your priorities]; if therefore your [priorities are] clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your [priorities are] bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

    When I was working, I often carried a small New Testament in my lunch box. For three or four months prior to writing this chapter, I repeatedly read these same verses from Matthew 6 during my lunch hour. It is a thought-provoking passage. Was Jesus just talking to some simple peasants who had little to lose anyway? Maybe it is just hyperbole. Maybe Jesus just wants me to work a little harder at my Sunday Christian activities! Besides that, it's obvious that I have to do my part in working for a living.

    Or did Jesus really mean what He said? Is Jesus telling me that if I will put His interests first, the Father will take special care of me?

    "But Jesus, do you know that my health is failing and that I need to build as much retirement as possible? I may soon be unemployable. Jesus, I am afraid. Can I really trust that what you said is true for me today? What if I put your interests first and the Father doesn't take care of me when I need it…?"

    We learn something else of great personal importance in this passage. Yet, even though the verses say the words, the reality will only be ours on the other side of the most trying and potentially devastating experiences of life. The lesson we learn is simply this: when the highest priorities of our life are kingdom interests, we are completely safe in the care of our loving Father.