What do you love the most?

There are moments in life that have a way of stripping things down to the essentials. Moments that clarify. Moments that reveal. Moments that, whether we like it or not, show us what really matters and what we actually love.

Matthew 6 speaks to us about how we handle those moments.

In this text, Jesus speaks with a kind of clarity that feels almost uncomfortable in a normal moment, but it feels particularly pointed in a season of distress. He looks straight at the human heart and tells us that the way we handle our possessions, our worries, and our priorities reveals who we love and what we trust. Not what we say we love. Not what we intend to love. What we actually love.

And that matters, because what we love shapes how we live and how we impact the world.

Jesus begins with a simple but searching command: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth… but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” His conclusion is unavoidable: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

What we chase after reveals our heart.

Jesus’ words cut through the noise and ask us to focus on what actually matters. Most of us, if we’re honest, spend an enormous amount of time and energy chasing things that won’t matter in the long run. Comfort. Control. Financial security. Status. Predictability. None of these things is bad in themselves, but none of them can bear the weight of our hope.

Jesus is telling us that the things we chase are the things we worship. And when those things start to shake or disappear, it forces us to ask uncomfortable questions. When you lose, or fear losing, what you have, perspective has a way of breaking in. Hard moments, then, as frightening as they may be, may also be a strange gift. They reveal the condition of our hearts.

Jesus doesn’t leave us room to remain neutral. He presses the issue further: “No one can serve two masters.” Everyone, without exception, has to decide what they are going to love and where they are going to place their trust.

These moments of pressure are clarifying. When life is calm, it’s easy to claim trust in God. But when things feel unstable, what we truly love and rely on comes into focus. Scripture is filled with people who claimed allegiance to God while functionally trusting something else. It’s possible to confess Jesus with our lips while rejecting him with our lives.

Pressure reveals character.

It’s only when we hit our thumb with a hammer that we find out what’s really inside us. And it’s only in moments of disruption and pain that the content of our hearts becomes unmistakably clear.

C.S. Lewis captured this reality when he wrote, “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

God uses moments like these to wake us up, not to shame us, but to invite us back to what is real and lasting.

Then Jesus says something astonishing: “Do not worry.”

Let’s be honest, this feels almost impossible. Worry feels justified. Responsible, even. But Jesus isn’t minimizing reality; he’s redefining trust. His point is that worry evaporates when we trust the One who actually holds what we’re worried about in his hands.

Our ability to rest in times of difficulty is directly proportional to our ability to trust.

The apostle Paul echoes this in Philippians 4: “Don’t worry about anything, but in everything, through prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

Peace doesn’t come from certainty; it comes from surrender.

Jesus points to the natural world as evidence of God’s care. Birds are fed. Flowers are clothed. And you, who bear the image of God, are of far greater value. This is not sentimental poetry. It’s a declaration about the nearness and attentiveness of God.

The ultimate promise of Scripture isn’t prosperity or protection from suffering, it’s presence. God with us.

Psalm 23 reminds us, “Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me.” And Revelation 21 points us forward to the day when God will wipe away every tear, when death and pain will be no more.

For those who trust in Jesus, we are not promised that we won’t get sick or suffer. But we are promised that God is with us and that he will make all things right in the end.

Jesus ends this teaching with an invitation: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Trusting God doesn’t make us passive; it makes us available. When we’re no longer consumed by self-preservation, we are freed to pursue God’s kingdom and serve others.

The kingdom of God isn’t abstract. It becomes visible through the lives of God’s people. The church isn’t a building. The church is you. It’s me. It’s the people of God living faithfully wherever they are.

And moments like this are precisely when the kingdom can be seen most clearly.

We can acknowledge real danger without being ruled by fear. We can resist the instinct to withdraw entirely and instead lean in with wisdom, compassion, and sacrificial love.

Historian Lyman Stone recently wrote about Christian responses to plagues throughout history, noting that Christian ethics consistently placed the neighbor's life above self-preservation. During the Plague of Cyprian in the third century, Christians became known for caring for the sick, often at great personal risk. Pagan leaders took notice. Sociologists even suggest that cities with Christian communities experienced dramatically lower death rates because of this care.

This pattern repeats throughout history. When the bubonic plague struck Wittenberg in 1527, Martin Luther refused to flee. He stayed to serve the sick, even though it cost his daughter her life. Luther famously wrote that Christians do not abandon their callings in times of plague: “The plague does not dissolve our duties; it turns them into crosses.”

Trust in Jesus allows us to rest in times of natural evil. And it empowers us to pursue his kingdom when everyone else is chasing safety at all costs.

Painful moments, while uncertain and unforgettable, are opportunities for followers of Jesus to demonstrate what we truly love. To serve without fear. To care for others at real cost. To trust that we cannot ultimately lose what we have already surrendered.

As Jim Elliott once said, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”

So the question remains, pressing and unavoidable: Who do you love?