With excitement and anticipation I jumped on a plane last Thursday evening to Florida to visit my family and fish some with my dad. Six hours after arrival I painfully watched while many types of medical professionals frantically, yet methodically temporarily stop my father's heart in order to prevent it not to matter twenty minutes later.

We watch it in movies, we even practice it in medical school, but when it is a part of your own blood you some how feel like it's your heart to on that table fighting for its own life. My father looked like something out of the Matrix movie with all those wires and electrodes hooked to him. I thought, "If I could only trade places with him and take the pain away." I prayed, "God let me be you just for this moment and make all this go away." I had to wonder though that God could easily come down and heal my dad or he could just take him away from us up to heaven, however, either way I had to trust and obey. I also thought of the timing in which only a few hours after my arrival that all this was taking place. Could there be hidden meaning in all this? Are there positives even in the face of death? Show me God, teach me something Lord I prayed!

My thoughts went back about three months to a conversation I had with a Christian friend of mine. At lunch we talked about current events and how much faith it took in the midst of death and tough relationships. He said to me, "Maybe God is preparing you for things to come." I thought the only thing I could think of worse than a close friend dying would be my parents passing away. The bible says in Matthew 6:21 "For were your treasure is, there will be your heart be also." Now as I watch my father in that hospital room I have realized and am thankful that my treasures are not of what this world has to offer but its, "The Matters of the Heart" that are the most important. It is not my job, my car, my house or even my friends but even as painful as it is the most important thing is my heart reaching out for my dads and Jesus reaching out for ours.

I have to wonder if this is what Jesus feels like every day with us. While we lay on that hospital bed of life, sometimes frustrated, helpless, and scared, what he wants more than anything to relieve the pain away trade places and take it all away. And then I thought, he has done all of that and much more. He died on the cross for us, he has already taken the pain away. And you know, knowing he did that for me allowed all that fear and frustration to disappear.

While my father didn't die this weekend in that hospital and is on the road to recovery, this experience has helped me to realize that it's truly not about the treasures here on earth. What matters most is our trust and obedience in God Almighty. You see it is easy for us to trust and obey in the good times of life, but it's in those hospital rooms and low points when we realize where our hearts really are and that is what matters most to God.

Where is your heart this week? Does it lie with the treasures of this world or is it with the one who died for you on the cross. For it is in our weakness to where we find our biggest strengths.

Greg Ryan

Greg Ryan is a high profile fitness expert and former employee of Kathy Smiths. Body building champion, public speaker and personal trainer to the stars. He is a best selling author of the Changing from the "INSIDE OUT" through real behavior change, smart eating and effective exercising.

Greg also is CEO of two successful weight loss and behavior change companies in Louisville, Kentucky. In his spare time he runs an internet weight loss e-book website.