Moving to Rio and Storing Heavenly Treasure.

https://youtu.be/7aqduuUeYXg

This is my first update since my trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. While down there, I learned how rich the area is for the gospel message, and I understood the calling to move to Brazil to spend more time working in this mission field. I learned many things during my initial visit, and a few Bible passages stuck out to me.

The first was Matthew 9:37, when Jesus spoke about the harvest being plentiful with few workers. This analogy fit strongly in Rio. There are many people in this region, especially tourists, with very few Christian evangelists, disciple-makers, teachers, and other various workers of Christ. This field, or mission theater, is full of revolving tourists and carioca "local" Brazilians ready to grow in a relationship with Jesus.

The other point that God illuminated to me during my visit was our status in America compared to much of the rest of the world. When Jesus speaks in Matthew 19 about a rich man having a harder time entering heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, I learned that we in America are extremely wealthy compared to the rest of the world. This is not meant to sound braggy. This is actually damning in the sense of Jesus' parable. We are in the small top percent of the wealthiest people on Earth, and if that is the case, then Jesus' parable is calling us to a sobering realization that we are in a position where our wealth can hinder us from having a proper relationship with Him. I break this down further, but I challenge us to think about how our materialistic things can hinder us from God by maintaining them financially and devoting time to stuff rather than to God.

This leads to my last point that these things we gather on Earth do not last. They are temporary even if they last a lifetime. We can't take anything with us to Heaven. So if that is the case, then we must compare the short time the physical things give us enjoyment to an eternity after we die. If things are holding us away from God, then that eternity will be in separation from God. This is something that just is not worth whatever the world can give us. We must shift our focus from gathering materialistic things that cause us to be enslaved to them to pay them off and maintain them to doing things that last for eternity. This means only things that can be stored in heaven are worth working toward in an eternal perspective. The only thing that passes final judgment is us. Individual people who found faith and trust in Jesus. So when Jesus says that we must store up heavenly treasures in Matthew 6, the treasures are individual people that God has granted us the pleasure to help guide to Jesus' grace. This is the most important thing that we can do in our lives.

Click the video above to watch or follow this link! https://youtu.be/7aqduuUeYXg