Imagine that you have decided to become a gold miner. You drop everything in the suburbs for a simpler life to pan gold by the side of a stream in the Colorado Rockies. After you start, you can’t believe how easy it is. Day after day you walk fifty yards to the trickling stream near your little cabin, and day after day you find lots of gold! After six months, you pour your treasure into a bag and drive into town where you plan to trade it for cash. Abandoning life in the big city never felt so good.
As you walk into the gold exchange office, you are excited.
“What do you have in the bag?” the man at the counter asks.
“I have gold!” You hand him your treasure, then patiently wait for him to weigh it and tell you how wealthy you have become. He peers inside the sack, then looks back up at you with question marks in his eyes.
“What’s wrong?” you ask.
“This isn’t gold,” he responds. “It’s fool’s gold. Pyrite. It’s worthless.”
There are many people who believe that they have found “gold” in life. They are convinced that because they have a fancy car, an influential job, or a beach body, that their life is creating value. Sadly, according to the Bible, they may believe they have “struck gold" but the reality is that all they have been doing is playing the fool.
In 1 John 2:16, the Bible says, “For everything in the world—the cravings of the sinful man, the lust of the eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world.” When we attribute lasting value to things like money, sex, influence, and selfish ambition, we have missed the way that God defines value.
So what does God value and how can you create a life of value?
John Wesley, the famous 17th century theologian gave us an answer when he said, “I value all things only by the price they shall gain in eternity.” The key to creating a life that will make a lasting impact is to care about the things that God will care about in heaven. Value is defined only by the things that last forever.
There are two things that are priorities for God now that will still be priorities for Him in eternity:
- Relationship with the people he created (that’s you) and
- Those He has created helping one other to know Him, too.
When we make God and others the two, top priorities in our lives, there is no way we can lose. We will automatically be creating value that will last forever. The person who does this will in no way be a fool. You won’t lay on your death bed moments before your entrance into eternity wishing you had chased something that really mattered. Don’t spend your life chasing “fool’s gold.” Instead, create value with your life that will last forever by loving God and loving others.
