Sharing our Treasure

 2 Cor 4:7 "But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us."

Jesus is our treasure and we are excited about sharing Him; it comes easily and overflows from fountain of life that lives within us.  Sharing Jesus by loving others in His name brings joy and energy (strength)  to our souls.  There are no formulas for what this looks like but the fruit is obvious, even to the casual observer.  The power to live an abundant life lives in us by the power of the Holy Spirit therefore love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are on display just like fruit on the vine.  These are things that the world cannot produce in abundance. 

My original thought when I started with this post relates to our trip and sharing the treasure of love and joy gained from our experiences and relationships developed on the mission field.  It reminds me of a quote from Mark Twain " to get the full value of joy you must have somebody to divide it with".   If something happened on our trip; and certainly something happened on our trip, God's power was revealed as we loved and served the people of Cambodia, then what does it mean and what am I going to do NOW because of what happened?  I have found that it is really important to share my treasure with others as an aid to help me process and ultimately act on my experiences.  Sharing the treasure is actually an important part of process.  I believe that there are a couple of reasons for this;
1) We long to glorify God and one way we do that is tell the stories of how God as worked in our lives and the lives of others through our first hand accounts. This is living out Act 1:8 "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”  Our testimony has a type of a shelf life, we need to share it while it is fresh.  If we just sit on our story it has a tendency to become stale; sharing helps us remember the details, the power and the emotion, keeps it fresh, creates an apatite for more and helps propel us to even greater things.
2) The Holy Spirit uses our testimony to call others to action while it helps us process and act on our experiences. 
3) The parable of the sower and the weeds is at work Matt 13.  We have an enemy that wants me to very quickly dismiss the idea that something of lasting (eternal) value has happened, that God has worked in our lives.  The enemy wants to steal the seed so that it has no chance to take root and grow, ultimately yielding a crop.
4) The Parable of the weeds says that the tares, the cares of this world, quickly grow up and choke out the growth of the seed making it unfruitful; makes it more difficult to act on our experiences. Jesus points out that many lives are unfruitful for this very reason. 

Sharing the treasure helps to keep the dream alive, provides a mirror to help us examine our experineces in the light and as a testimoney of the power of God in our lives.  This in turn allows to God nurture and water the seed to help it grow.  In addition to all that sharing our treasure is fun, we need others to help us make our joy complete......