Matthew 6:19-21, “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.”
I often am reminded of this awesome Scripture passage. Dear friend, this earthly life is as a vapour the Holy Bible says in James. I tell people that life is short, Hell is hot and eternity is a long time. I thank God with all my heart, mind and soul that I am a redeemed child of God. I thank God for the precious blood of Jesus that washed all my sins away when I got saved at age 13 in 1980. Oh, it is wonderful to be a Christian! ...
Oh, it is wonderful to be a Christian!
Jesus is precious!!! I do not claim to be a good Christian. I want to be, but I am just an imperfect redeemed child of God. THANK GOD FOR JESUS!!! I am so grateful that Christ died on the cross to pay for my sins, and that He was buried but bodily resurrected from the dead three days later (1st Corinthians 15:1-6).
If you are a born again child of God, I encourage you to get busy serving God, if not doing so already. Jesus admonished us in our text passage from Matthew 6:19-20 about not wasting our efforts to lay up treasures here on earth, where thieves will break through and steal. If common criminals don't break into your home and steal your possessions; then white collar criminals (lawyers, politicians, financiers, realtors and judges) will steal whatever you have saved in your bank account, 401K retirement, savings, your home or other assets they can take. Sadly, we live in a predatory culture of greed in America!!!
About 25 years ago I was heavily invested into the Stock Market, between 1995 and 2000. In one year alone I made 130 options trades at Charles Schwab. Their company made over $5,000 that year from me just on commissions. I bought all of the books from Investor's Business Daily, which are fascinating in my humble opinion. An option allows you to control a lot of shares of stock with only a little amount of money. I liked options trading because if things went south, you couldn't lose more than the amount of money that you invested.
I followed Intel's stock daily. The stock did what's known as a “Dead Cat Bounce.” That is, Intel's stock had dropped ridiculously low, and I knew it wouldn't stay down just on market volatility, so I purchased quite a few long term call options (3 months out) on Intel's stock. The stock shot up and then split, doubling my call options. The stock ran up again, and split again. Literally, I turned a $10,000 investment into $140,000 in just one month! Those were the insane “.com” times of Irrational Exuberance, which Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan correctly called them. I didn't know what I was doing really. I wasn't trying to get rich, I just hated my job with a passion. I hated working with ungodly sinners (adulterers, homosexuals, blasphemers, drug addicts, thieves, thugs and perverts). I hated my job!
I foolishly didn't sell my call options when I should have, because I got greedy, and they expired worthless. When investing, you learn about something called “Risk Threshold.” This is the amount of emotional stress you can handle, regarding how much risk you are willing to take on. Two big emotions come to play when you invest, which are fear and greed. Will you sell your position in the market too soon because of fear, and miss out on a big increase a week later in the stock. That happened to me. I had a large stock position in American Online, but the stock dropped from $37 to $35 and I panicked in fear and sold out. In the weeks to follow the stock ran up over $100, had a stock split, and then ran up again over $100. I would have made a ton of money had I just not sold my amount of stock shares. Fear worked on me. That is what I mean by “Risk Threshold.”
I used to wake up, having to go to work that night. I worked the ungodly graveyard shift for 7 years between 1993 and 2000. That was one of the worst decisions I ever made, to work midnights. Please don't ever choose to wok those hours if you have a choice. And if you are now working those hours, for the sake of your family please get off that shift. Working the graveyard shift is detrimental to any family man. It was 7 years of hellish torture.
Anyway, I used to wake up and check my stocks. If they were up in price I was happy and fell off to sleep. If they were losing price, I worried and couldn't sleep. Let me tell you, I wouldn't go through that again, even if I stood to gain millions of dollars. I mean that! Finally, in the year 2000, Bill Clinton was voted out of office and George W. Bush took his place. The Stock Market plunged with the change of U.S. Presidents, and never returned until 8 years later when Bush left office. Go figure! In 2000 I lost everything. When all was said and done, over the 5-years that I tried my hand at playing the Stock Market, I had lost $50,000 in cash. That was every penny of working 6 nights a week for 5 years, plus a whole lot more of working weeknights as well. From that day until now in 2023, I have never bought another stock. When the .com era ended, so did my interest in the Stock Market.
Also, I spoke with my manager and put in a schedule request to leave midnight shift and work afternoons instead. That was one of the best decisions I ever made. Once I started working afternoons, and sleeping at night as God intended, I got my life back! I felt like a million bucks! I never signed up for overtime again, not once. I abandoned the hope of becoming financially independent.
The crazy thing was that I had invested 8 years of my life to attend Hyles-Anderson College (1985-1993) to become a pastor. I graduates on the Dean's List in 1993. Truthfully, I just didn't know how to make it happen, that is, to become a pastor of a church. I learned that I am a follower and not a leader by nature. I began my website ministry in 2002, and have been investing in eternal rewards ever since, laying up treasures in the Kingdom of God. The $50,000 that I lost playing the Stock Market was worth losing, because it taught me the value of a dollar. A dollar saved is a dollar earned!!!
I learned the hard way between 1995 and 2000 that the school of Wall Street charges a high tuition. That is to say, I lost a lot of money learning some hard lessons. I do not recommend for anyone to play the Stock Market. Day Trading is nothing short of gambling in Las Vegas. If you want to invest, I recommend The S& P 500 (an unmanaged mutual fund of the 500 top U.S. corporations), which historically out performs ALL managed stock portfolios in the long run (and you can double your money every 8 years). It is much safer to invest your hard earned money in 500 companies instead of just one, like I did in Intel. And if you're a paranoid worrisome type of person, then you want to invest in a 45-years CD (certificate of deposit). Of course, you will receive less interest. As a general rule, the greater risk that you assume, the greater potential gains or losses.
There is even something called the “Futures Market,” which is absolutely fascinating. I bought all of Ken Roberts books. But with Futures contracts you can lose MUCH more than you initially invested, be sued in court to pay up, and a bunch of nasty bad things can happen to you. Futures contracts are for farmers, to protect their income if the crop fails. Futures were invented by speculators, as a means of guaranteeing farmers a certain amount of income annually, but if the crop is a bumper crop over expectations, then the speculator gets all that extra profit, since he took on all the risk.
If you are thinking of investing in the Stock Market, I kindly suggest before you do that you read a very intriguing book (if you can find a copy) by a man named Richard Ney, called: 'The Wall Street Jungle.' Richard Ney exposes the lie of Wall Street, documenting how insiders rip the public off, and cheat people out of their money. Yes, dear reader, the Stock Market is rigged to take away money from 90% of the public who invests. “The trend is your friend” they say on Wall Street. That is, you should never invest against moving averages (3-month and 6-month averages usually), unless you really know what you are doing, because 90% of all stocks follow their trends.
I have shared all of the preceding personal information with you dear reader, to say that in my humble opinion it was all in vain. There are some who have done very well in the Stock Market, and I am happy for them. However, the emotional trauma that I incurred daily as a result of my experiences with the Stick Market, left me broken and tired, dreading the whole ordeal. I would never go through that again. When it comes to the Stock Market, NO ONE wins all the time. It all boils down to getting good enough (if you think you can), so that you win more than you lose. That is the key, to win more than you lose. And don't forget that you have to pay Uncle Sam taxes on all that cheddar, if you strike it big, and the more you make, the more THEY TAKE!!!
It was all that loss, aggravation and lessons hard learned, that really opened my eyes to the awesome investment opportunity for believers concerning laying up treasures in Heaven. Dear friend, God doesn't make anyone pay taxes in Heaven! Heaven's Stock Market isn't rigged!!! Of course, there is no Stock Market in Heaven. Thank God!!! But even better, God is the one who will distributing rewards to those believers who serve Him here on earth now (1st Corinthians 3:8-9). God is so good!
There are umpteen ways to lay up treasures in Heaven. In fact, anything and everything that we do for the cause of Christ—helping the poor, serving in our local church voluntarily, praying and fasting, praying for each other, laboring for a ministry, banking cookies ladies for the church, giving money for the cause of Christ, et cetera, will be rewarded. What saith the Scripture? Mark 9:41, “For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in my name, because ye belong to Christ, verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his reward.” Wow! God is so ethical (doing the right thing), that He is going to reward even those saints who help other saints who are serving Jesus. So if you share my ministry on social media, God will reward you for that in eternity, because I am serving Jesus Christ. By sharing the sermons of faithful men of God, I am earning rewards in Heaven, because they served Christ.
I hope I am encouraging you dear friend to get busy doing something for Jesus Christ. Perhaps you are not learned enough in the Word of God to write articles, or contend for the faith, but you can at least share the writings, sermons and blogs of doctrinally sound preachers on social media.
But I must warn you, if you ignorantly promote the junk theology of infidels like John MacArthur, Ray Comfort, Paul Washer, Steve Pettit, Marty Herron, John Piper, Benny Hinn, Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen, Beth Moore, Joyce Meyer, Kirk Cameron, William Lane Craig, Chip Ingram, Rick Warren or other greedy religious con artists, then you won't receive anything from God. God will only reward you for promoting a free grace Gospel and the inspired King James Bible!
