Verse
of the day: Proverbs 15:16-17 Better is a
little with the fear of the Lord, than great
treasure with trouble. Better is a
dinner of herbs where love is, than a fatted calf with hatred.
The one thing that I have noted
over my years as a born again Christian is the lack of contentment that exists
in the life of many of my brothers and sisters in Christ. A closer look usually
reveals that one of the root causes of much of that lack of peace, joy, and
happiness, in the life of a believer is that they are too focused on worldly
gain. Too many Christians desire to live “the good life” to their own hurt.
King Solomon, in verse 6 of this Proverb, tells us that in the house of the righteous
there is much treasure. When we compare that to these verses, the contrast
shows us that whether God chooses for us to have much or little, we have the
ability to have contentment. The bottom line is that the overshadowing
principle here is that whether we have riches or not, the most important thing
we can possess is righteousness, the fear of God, and love (His love for us,
and our love for Him and others). 1 Timothy 6:10 tells us, For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in
their greediness, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Matthew 6:24 reminds us that, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will
hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and
despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. Although God can
choose to make us wealthy, our primary focus needs to be our relationship with
the Lord. Matthew 6:25-33 tells us to seek first the kingdom of God, and His
righteousness, and all our needs will be met. As God’s children we must live a
content, and balanced, life. God provides us our health so that we can go out
and work, to earn a living, in order for us to provide for our needs, and our
families’ needs. However, we must always keep the things of God as a priority
in our lives over gaining that which the world offers, that will allegedly bring
us “happiness”. Sadly, and quite often, our quiet time with God, our prayer
life, our study of God’s Word, and our service to Him, end up taking a backseat
to working overtime, and time invested in schemes and businesses that consume our
time with both Him and family; all for the sake of gaining more earthly riches,
or status in society. Eventually what happens is that God becomes our “lucky
rabbit’s foot” that we take out of or pocket and rub every time something goes
wrong in our personal or business life. Even as Christians, if we become
friends of the world, we make ourselves enemies of God (Jm 4:4-5). Of what good
is it if we have all that the world has to offer, if there is nothing but
turmoil in our lives, and not have peace or joy? Of what benefit is there to
have all the riches in the world, but not have our health? How important will
we feel, even if we are well known in society, but we have a dear loved one who
is near death because of an illness or disease? Of what good will all of the
world’s offerings be to us when we are about to leave this earth and meet our
God? Why do we strive for that which we will not even be able to take with us?
1 Timothy 6:7 tell us, For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we
can carry nothing out. The bottom line is that any one of us, who knows
the Lord, and has eternal life, can live a life of contentment if we learn to
be content with what God chooses to give us (just like the Apostle Paul stated
in Philippians 4:11-13); and if we make it a priority in life to seek
righteousness, fear God, and love both God and others. If we do this, we will
be more concerned with being good stewards and not being wasteful with what God
blesses us with regardless of how much or how little it is. Let us learn to be
thankful for our blessings, rather than focus our attention of the blessings we
think we should have or deserve; because God has already blessed us beyond what
we deserve, even if all we possess in this lifetime is eternal life with
Christ. Hebrews 13:5-6 tells us, to not be covetous, but be content with such
things as we have, knowing that we have Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment