Digging For Treasure

I just popped some mint gum into my mouth. Wow! What a powerful burst of flavor! But within 2 or 3 minutes the flavor is gone and I want to spit it out and pop another burst of powerful mint in. I have a different brand of mint gum in my purse. It tastes great and lasts for hours. Different ingredients. Quality ingredients.

This reminds me of some Christians and their experiences. They jump into a relationship with God buoyed up by a worship environment that plays on the emotions; loud music, words that momentarily thrill, dancing, clapping, shouting.

Are these bad? No. All of them can be found in scripture as legitimate ways to respond to God. But a dose of that with nothing to sustain a person's experience with God can be a tasteless as 3-minute, poor-quality gum. We're tempted to spit it out and go looking for something else that will satisfy. Or we wallow in spiritual dullness until the next exciting worship service.

We need quality ingredients that will sustain us through the week. Time alone with God, time with God's people, time studying His Word, time worshipping, time listening and singing songs that have sound doctrine.

God has so much more planned for us than our Sunday morning worship experience. He has treasures for us to discover every day. If we're not aware of that fact then we won't go searching.

Let's not make the mistake of grabbing that cheap gum; going for the easy thrill or burst of flavor; the weekly fix where someone else does the work of enticing you into worship. Instead be willing to add ingredients and action to your routine that will stir up the flavor. Choices that will cause you to taste and see that He is good!

“Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!  Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!” (Psalm 34:8)

Dig deep and find treasures. Seek!

“You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.”
(Jeremiah 29:13)

“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103)

Paul prays, “that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” (Colossians 2:2‭-‬3)

”if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.” (Proverbs 2:4‭-‬5)

”thus storing up treasure for themselves as a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is truly life.” (1 Timothy 6:19)

Paul again prays, ”that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”
(Ephesians 1:17‭-‬21)

”If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”
(Colossians 3:1 ESV)