Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a video of the group 4Him singing their poignant song, The Basics of Life,… declaring the reality that we, Christians, need to do all we can to return to the basics of our faith, balancing the challenges of work, play, family, etc.
Highlight Passage: Proverbs 16:24 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
5 The fool folds his hands and consumes his own flesh. 6 Better a handful with quietness than both hands full, together with toil and grasping for the wind.
… In other works, as the song, linked above, sings … “we need to get back to the basics of life!”
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Highlight Context – Ecclesiastes 4:4-16 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… After blowing a good portion of his adult life on excesses, Solomon (under God’s inspiration and conviction) writes of how we must balance the essentials of life.
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Reference Passage #1 - John 14:21 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… Jesus, Himself, gives us His formula for living a balanced, successful Christians life. Could it be any clearer?
Reference Passage #2 - Ephesians 4:1-2, 5:15-17 [NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… God, thru Paul, gives Christians great advice on how walk carefully and wisely, following the will of God for our lives, … and seeking to follow God’s ways of balancing life … not our own.
My Journal for Today: Today’s Our Daily Bread author, Poh Fang Chila, tells a story illustrating his teaching. He wrote: Henry worked 70 hours a week. He loved his job and brought home a sizeable paycheck to provide good things for his family. He always had plans to slow down but he never did. One evening he came home with great news—he had been promoted to the highest position in his company. But no one was home. Over the years, his children had grown up and moved out, his wife had found a career of her own, and now the house was empty. There was no one to share the good news with.
The author’s point is pretty clear, isn’t it? In our human condition we have a prideful tendency to work for self gratification or for some worldly image of success rather than living for what the song above sings … for the basics of life, which conform to God’s will and His ways.
Jesus clearly told His Disciples (and you and me by extension) that when we live to express His commandments in our lives, we will manifest Himself to others [see John 14:21]. But therein lies the rub, doesn’t it? As with Solomon, we so often default in life to selfish motives and worldly ideas of success, rather than seeking God’s will and His ways. Hence, as did Solomon, we live, as he wrote in his journal in Ecclesiastes [see highlight passage above], for vanity rather than for God’s glory.
The Apostle Paul also chided Christians (see Ephesians 4:1-2 and 5:15-17) to do all we can to our lives wisely and circumspectly, seeking God’s ways and acting on them.
And the question I deal with EVERYDAY is … “AM I ?!”
My Prayer Today: Heavenly Father, … Help me, Lord, to discern Your will and walk in Your ways. Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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