“Our Daily Bread” http://odb.org/
The Daily Devotions of Greg Laurie
http://www.harvest.org/devotional/daily-devotions/home.ht
“Homily Grits Devotional” http://www.homilygrits.com/
Ecclesiastes 12:6-7… Remember your Creator before the silver cord is loosed,Or the golden bowl is broken, Or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, Or the wheel broken at the well. 7 Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, And the spirit will return to God who gave it. (NKJV)
The opening scripture was written by the wise Solomon, who wrote the Book of Ecclesiastes to give all of us a very important lesson on what is absolutely life’s most important point of filling the void in the human heart…
A little background on those who don’t know too much about Solomon… He was the son of King David (the shepherd boy who years before, killed the 9 foot, 6 inch Goliath, with a sling and a stone…1 Samuel chapter 17… Solomon, who was about to take over the kingdom from his father David, prayed to the Lord for wisdom to be capable of walking in his father’s very large footsteps… God answered Solomon’s humble prayer for only wisdom, with not only wisdom beyond anyone else of the times (maybe ever), as recorded in…1 Kings 4:29-32…but God also gave Solomon riches, wealth, and honor such as no one had ever received either before or after Solomon…2 Chronicles 1:12…
With all of Solomon’s wisdom, and wealth, and power beyond belief…Solomon finally realized that all the money and the power and the pleasures the world seeks and finds, just won’t satisfy the human heart… Solomon admits in…Ecclesiastes 2:1-11…that even after he had obtained every treasure and desire and pleasure he could possibly think of…it was all for nothing…Ecclesiastes 2:11b… And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There wasno profit under the sun. (NKJV)
With all that the wise Solomon had learned…he used his God given wisdom to speak over 3,000 proverbs and 1,005 songs (1 Kings 4:32); and Solomon wrote half of the Book of Proverbs to teach us how to live godly lives…
The opening scripture comes at the end of Solomon’s important Book of lessons learned…where Solomon tells us to seek the Lord before we die… Isaiah tells us the same thing in…Isaiah 55:6… Seek the Lord while He may be found, Call upon Him while He is near. (NKJV) Solomon, in chapter 11 of Ecclesiastes, makes an even more important point…and that is to not wait until we are old to seek the Lord, or wait until it’s too late, when we die before knowing the Lord as our personal Savior…
Ecclesiastes 11:10-12:1… Therefore remove sorrow from your heart, And put awayevil from your flesh, For childhood and youth are vanity. 12:1 Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth, Before the difficult days come, And the years draw near when you say, “I have no pleasure in them”: (NKJV)
There is no amount of money or success in life that will satisfy one’s heart… There will always be something missing in a life that is not filled with the love of Christ… Everyone is either blinded and living in the world with Satan as their father (John 8:44)…or they have become a child of God, after God has drawn them in, and awakened them to the fact that they are sinners in need of His saving grace… New believers receive the gift of God’s grace through what is also a gift of God…saving faith alone in Jesus Christ…Ephesians 2:8-9…
John 6:44… Noone can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me drawshim; and I will raise him up at the last day. (NKJV)
God uses His Word through the message of the cross (1 Corinthians 1:18), where the gospel (“Good News”) message of our Lord Jesus Christ is shared by believers…to those in need of hearing about how the Lord is capable of changing a heart of stone into a heart that is filled with the love of Christ…Ezekiel 36:26…
I can personally attest to the fact that without God behind me (and with-in me), life was an uphill battle in my own mortal strength… I struggled for over 50 years with the false belief that I was a Christian… My life revolved around me and my family…with work being the driving force to provide for my families needs… I knew about God…but I didn’t know God as my Father… Pride and self were in control of my life… Friends, I call this putting the cart before the horse…
Praise the Lord for family who cared about me, and for God’s patience and longsuffering… I started going to a Bible believing and teaching church, where I heard the true gospel message on a regular basis… Within 15 months, God’s gift of grace through saving faith alone in Jesus Christ, showered down upon me… My life was changed in the blink of an eye, for all eternity… There are no words to express a life filled with the Holy Spirit !! Praise God for His grace and His mercy !!
This scripture written by the Apostle Paul comes to mind…Ephesians 3:16-20… that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through HisSpirit in the inner man, 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height— 19 to know the love of Christ which passesknowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 20 Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly aboveall that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, (NKJV)
Humility and total dependence on the Lord are contrary to the way the world thinks… But I am here to tell you that this is God’s plan for His redeemed children… God must be first in the life of a Christian…and not their job, or their family, or their friends, any other god that comes before God… Anything less than loving the Lord with ALL of our heart, our mind, and our soul…won’t make God happy… And when we live as Christians, with unconfessed sins…we can no longer expect God to shower us with His richest blessings…“aboveall that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us”…comes after we are “filled with all the fullness of God”…
Heavenly Father, help all of us understand the importance of seeking Your Son Jesus Christ, through the message of the cross at a younger age…so as to benefit with Your helping hand behind us, and Your guiding light above us, and the power of the Holy Spirit with-in us…to help guide us down the right path in life…Proverbs 3:5-6… I pray for this fullness of Christ in all of our lives…in Jesus’ most precious name and fort His sake…Amen…
Blessings in Christ, bruce r mills
P.S. Here is a link for this most important days writing, about how God’s grace is received to become a Christian in God’s eyes; through understanding and obeying the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ…
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