“A good man, out of the treasure of his heart brings forth good;An evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart brings forth evil.”Luke 6:43-45
Something interesting I discovered is the Greek word for treasure. It is thesauros – a storehouse for precious things, which is the root for our English word thesaurus – a storehouse of synonyms. I also discovered that the Greek meaning for bring forth refers to moving something with high energy and force to its necessary state of being obvious, apparent, evident. The good man (or woman) referred to here comes from the word agathos – describes what originates from God and is empowered by Him in their life, through faith.
Yes. That was a lot of background. But necessary! This made me think about how my heart (my treasure chest) is full of words that describe what I’m all about, what’s important to me, what I believe, what I spend time thinking about. It’s constantly being filled by what I chose to put there (my treasure). And the words that come out of my mouth are completely shaped by all I’ve stored up in my heart. So, sadly, sometimes what comes out is not so good.
But if I store up scripture – God’s words – in my heart, what I treasure will constantly be sorted out by the transformational power of the Holy Spirit. Honestly, all the things I throw in there are not all that good, and if I were left to the tending of it, I’d likely hang on to things that should not have been put there in the first place.
I can’t hope in or rely on my ‘good nature’ to make me one who” brings forth good”. But I can rely on the fact that the only reason I can have any evidence of goodness in me is that I am a believer – a person empowered by God to do good.
So, the more I sink my thoughts into God’s Word, my less than stellar thoughts are adjusted, and my heart fills up with goodness to the point of overflowing. And that’s a big relief. Otherwise, I’d have to wait for all the bad to leak out to make room for the good!