Heaven’s Currency: Treasures That Never Fade
“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
— Matthew 6:19-21 (KJV)
A young woman in Lagos sits in her office, staring at a promotion offer. The salary is excellent—enough to buy the house she has always wanted, to invest in her children’s private education, to build a business that will make her financially independent by forty. Yet as she prays, she feels the Holy Spirit asking a harder question: What will matter when she stands before the throne of God?
This is the struggle of every believer in Nigeria today. We live in a nation where survival itself requires shrewd financial planning. Many of us have known want. Many of us carry the weight of family obligations. The call to build, to save, to establish security feels not just reasonable but moral. And it is—up to a point. But Jesus, in Matthew 6, draws a line that cuts through all our ambitions.
He does not say that having possessions is sin. He says our hearts must not be fastened to them. “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth”—this is not a commandment against prudence, but against the inversion of our ultimate loyalty. When we organize our lives, our choices, and our prayers around the accumulation of things that time will consume, we have missed the entire point of existence. Moths will eat the finest cloth. Rust will devour the newest car. Thieves will break in. Death will take it all.
But treasures in heaven—these are different in kind, not merely in degree. When you win a soul to Christ, that person is yours forever. When you speak the truth in love at great personal cost, that courage is recorded in heaven. When you give to the hungry in the name of Jesus, He receives it as given to Himself (Matthew 25:35). When you endure hardship with faith, you are “laying up” a crown of righteousness (2 Timothy 4:8). These investments grow in a currency that never inflates, never loses value, never decays.
Notice Jesus’s final word: “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” This is not a threat; it is a description of human nature. Your heart follows your investment. If you are pouring yourself into earthly accumulation, your heart will become earthbound, anxious, and fragile. But if you are consciously, deliberately building treasures in heaven—through prayer, witness, generosity, obedience, and endurance—your heart will be secure in God. It will be anchored to what cannot be shaken.
This does not mean neglecting your family’s needs or refusing the job that provides for them. It means holding it all loosely. It means asking, before every significant financial decision: Will this draw my heart toward God or away from Him? Will this strengthen my faith or weaken it?
Lord, teach me to hold earthly things with open hands, and to grip eternal things with all my might.