All honor to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for it is by his boundless mercy that God has given us the privilege of being born again. Now we live with a wonderful expectation because Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. 4For God has reserved a priceless inheritance for his children. It is kept in heaven for you, pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay. 5And God, in his mighty power, will protect you until you receive this salvation, because you are trusting him. It will be revealed on the last day for all to see. (1 Peter 1:3-5)

    Strange! I had already entitled my article “Take it to the Bank” and when I opened the paper the next morning, there it was on the top of the sports page: “Take it the Bank.” The headline referred to the amazing way Tim Duncan nonchalantly goes about “banking in” shot after shot against the best in the NBA. Nobody seems able to stop him.

    My father used the phrase “you can take it to the bank” to designate something that was sure, something you could “count on” no matter what else happens. In my late teenage years and early twenties, my dad impressed on me the importance of real estate and a family home as the ultimate and sure investments in an otherwise undependable economy. “Real estate is always a good investment, son, and you can take that to the bank.”

    Well, he is mostly correct, except...

    Ouch, and do those exceptions hurt! In the three decades since he first uttered this advice to me, we’ve gone through two fairly long periods where houses and real estate lost tremendous values and those who were caught in these declines lost “tons” of money. And now, to top it all off is the “mold crisis.” A bad bout of an unwanted mold found in the house can absolutely destroy the resale value of a house; and, because many insurance companies are abandoning homeowners to their mold problems, all the equity value of a home can be eaten up with remediation.

My dad taught me that the most important thing in all of life was...

    Yikes! Is there anything about which we can honestly say, “And you can take it to the bank”?

    Yep! My dad taught me that the most important thing in all of life was living with Jesus as my Lord. I can still remember the May Sunday that he asked me to confess Christ in front of the Highland Church and then he helped baptize me into Christ. Even though he died when I was only 25, he left me an investment strategy that has stood every test of time and that ensures that I will share life again with him in glory. It’s an investment strategy that I have taught my two children. What’s more, this investment is kept in heaven for me by the power of God himself, free from decay, theft, and loss.

    Dads, we have the opportunity to teach our children lessons that last more than a lifetime. We are given the place of honor in our children’s hearts so that we can ensure our relationship with them is forever. There is no greater treasure, or title, than to be a godly father that leads his children to know Jesus as Lord.

    “You can take it to the bank!”

Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where they can be eaten by moths and get rusty, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where they will never become moth-eaten or rusty and where they will be safe from thieves. Wherever your treasure is, there your heart and thoughts will also be. (Matthew 6:19-21)