Heavily Stocked with His Goodness

 

Proverbs 4:23(NLT)
“Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.”

Jesus Christ tells us that the human heart is a treasury, and a treasury is a container; it holds things. Looking at this a little further, another important piece of information about the treasury of our hearts is that it can store good things and it can store bad things. The reason that this information is crucial to our lives is because Proverbs 4:23 tells us that the issues of life flow from what we are carrying in our hearts. Carrying the wrong things can hinder our elevation, promotion, and blessings. In Luke 6:45(NLT), Jesus Christ teaches, “A good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart. What you say flows from what is in your heart.” This tells us all we need to know about the power and grace God has given us. He has created us in such a way that we live from the inside out. Our outside will present a mirror image of what is going on inside us, and God has given us the liberty and ability to transform our interior if we don’t like what we see.

Every individual carries good and bad memories, feelings, and emotions in their hearts. Our Master Jesus is teaching us that the treasury we choose to pull from is up to us. We can live through the good treasury and deplete the evil one, or vice versa. Proverbs 4:23 instructs us to keep an eye on what we are treasuring or storing up, and it warns us to be extremely careful about what we let out of our hearts. If we let the wrong things out and express negative thoughts and attitudes to others, we are hurting ourselves. We’re setting ourselves up for failure, and we need be conscious and careful about this.

God also tells us in Philippians 4:6 that we shouldn’t concentrate on situations by being worried and filled with doubt. Instead, He instructs us to pray to Him about every detail of our lives. He tells us that when we pray about our requests, we must do it with a heart that is only pulling from the treasury of thankfulness and gratitude. This means that we should be confident and have faith, because our wonderfully loving Heavenly Father has all power in His hands. He can do anything, and He will come to our aid. When this is our approach, Philippians 4:7(NLT) tells us, “Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.”

Our hearts are not created to harbor anything that doesn’t promote the peace of God. Therefore, when we are not guarding our hearts the way God tells us, and we’re allowing all kinds of negativity in, we will find it challenging to let His peace rule. This is the place when the issues of our lives get out of control. They are responding to our lack of willingness to let Christ be Lord over our emotions. If our aim is to stay on an elevated path of blessings and spiritual growth, we’ll have to change this.

As we prepare our hearts to receive new blessings and to move to a greater dimension of spiritual growth and maturity in Christ, we must move to higher levels of accountability and responsibility. If we’re praying to God to receive more blessings than we currently have, we must have the courage to look at where we are and recognize that we’ll need to change. It is not possible to be a good steward of greater blessings without accepting the truth that more will be required of us. Jesus Christ teaches us in Luke 12:48(NLT), “When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.” He is revealing God’s law of increase and expansion, and we must understand that God will never violate His law.  

This means that we will have to stop looking at external factors to tell us where we are in faith and start looking internally, at our own hearts. Many of us have endured heartache and despair in life. We’ve had broken relationships and marriages, and some of us have spent a tremendous amount to time blaming the person we once loved for the demise of the relationship. We blame the government, the economy, and any other person or institution we think is at fault. But Adam and Eve taught us that the nature of darkness is to blame and to look down on accepting responsibility and being accountable. Most of us have continued this very harmful practice.

God wants us to recognize our potential to turn things around for ourselves by changing the way we think. He tells us in Romans 12:2(NLT), “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” He doesn’t want us to feel bad about ourselves, instead, He wants us to grow above the mistakes and missteps we’ve made in life. Romans 8:1 tells us that there is no condemnation in Jesus Christ. This means that we shouldn’t punish ourselves and put ourselves down. After we give our lives to Jesus Christ, we begin the journey of becoming more like him. Becoming more like Christ means that we understand that it’s all about going higher not lower. We don’t wallow in our mistakes. We should examine where we are, make a commitment to see what we need to see, and then learn to walk in the example of Christ in a greater way.

And to go higher, we have to put on our big girl or big boy pants; that’s what accountability is all about. It’s seeing life’s hiccups from the perspective of learning greater lessons about God’s love. As spiritually mature believers, we don’t hide behind fig leaves like Adam and Eve. We don’t attempt to cover up the thing that should be acknowledged, confronted, repented of, and released. Again, and most importantly, we don’t wallow in self-punishment over the thing we may have gotten wrong. Instead, we seek forgiveness from God, and then, we accept His forgiveness by forgiving ourselves and growing stronger in Christ. We should commit ourselves to learn more about Christ and become better in him.  

Understanding that we live from the inside out elevates our consciousness about the choices and decisions we make. It’s an awareness that everything is spiritual, and nothing happens by happenstance. Our hearts are attracting and repelling people, situations, and circumstances, and it takes an incredible amount of spiritual maturity to live life through this level of enlightenment. Sometimes a person’s heart repels instead of attracts the right people into their lives; it attracts people who resonate with their refusal to look into their own hearts. The wrong people are responding to our unwillingness to acknowledge the areas that God is telling us to attend to. We won’t look at those areas within, and this disconnects us from growth and the blooms of blessings that come from it.

When we make a habit pattern of yielding to doubt, anxiety, and negative attitudes and behaviors, we become a magnet for situations and circumstances that keep us stuck in those heavies. Some individuals will argue that this couldn’t possibly be true, and they do this because they don’t want to accept the reflection life is holding up for them. It’s easier to point the finger or to say, “oh, that’s just the way life is.” Not so. Life in Christ is more than abundant! He tells us this in John 10:10, and if this isn’t our reality, we shouldn’t sit back with our hands folded beneath our laps. We should be actively pursuing God for the truths that unlock the doors to the blessings that will take us higher in Christ.

Galatians 5:22-23(NLT) states, “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” These yummies present the delicious feast that is inside us through God’s Holy Spirit. The Spirit helps us produce through his rich harvest. He gives us the treasury that tells the truth about who God created us to be. Anything outside the Spirit’s fruit isn’t the Will of God for us. To receive all that He has in store, we must stop being afraid to change our inner landscape. Jesus Christ tells us in John 15:2 that God is the Master Gardener. He cuts off branches that don’t produce fruit and prunes those that do, so they can produce even more. Pray and let God have His way with your life! Read His Word and follow His guidance, so that the treasury of your heart will be heavily stocked with His goodness.■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. 

 “Heavily Stocked with His Goodness”, by written for Christian Encouragement and Inspiration© 2022. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.