Life is Meaningless Without the Salvation of Jesus

Verses:  Ecclesiastes 12:1-8

My thoughts about the verses:

Have you ever tried to learn a new skill that seemed way too impossible?  You work hard to get it down, but the more you try to learn it the more confused you get.  You tried to get help from others, yet you still cannot learn the new skill.  There comes a point that you realize that all of your effort is useless.

When I was went to college to get my Bachelor’s degree one of the requirements was calculus.  It was my most challenging of all classes that I had.  My professor would stay after each class and answer my questions.  I would also go to his office for one on one tutoring.  Yet, when it came time for the midterm I failed.  I don’t mean by a small amount I only got three of the fifty questions right.  He knew how hard I tried so he withdrew me for the class so would not fail.

The next semester I took the class with the same professor.  He again helped me every day after class.  We thought I had it down.  Then the midterm cam and I failed the test miserably.  He let me withdraw once again.  We did this two more times.  Yet, no matter how hard I tried to learn it the more confused I got. 

After the fourth time of failing the midterm he told me that he would talk to the chair of the mathematics department and see what we could do.  I actually graduated college taking other mathematics classes and never completed calculus.  I would tell you right now what little I learned from the class, but I do not remember anything about the math itself.  What I learned is that there are people that will go out of their way to help you.  They will not give up on you even when they know that you will never learn what they are teaching you.  You have to respect individuals like this. 

The problem that is happening in these verses is that people are having a hard time understanding the power of the God.  We easily accept that God created the world.  We struggle with how much God really does love us.  We assume God as our Creator desires us to be perfect and since we are not without fault we are not worthy of God’s love.  It is because of this that we get confused.  We are confused how God could love someone that was not perfect.

Yet, what we miss is that the Messiah came into the world not for the perfect, but for the sinner.  Jesus comes out of love for us.  Jesus was the perfect lamb that died so that we may have our trespasses forgiven.  We are so caught up in our own perception that we miss what is right in front of our eyes. 

Many will spend years trying to figure out how they can become worthy for God’s love.  Yet, they will never be successful on their own.  We have to listen to what God is telling us.  We have to understand that God loves us no matter what.  We should not confuse our thoughts of love with God’s idea of love.  God loved us so much that the Messiah was sent so that we may have everlasting life. 

Imagine sending your son to die for people that were not perfect.  Imagine being that son going willing to death so that others could have everlasting life.  This is not something that we have to imagine ever happening, it has happened.  The Messiah came so that we may have the liberation that our soul searches for.

We also need to understand that it’s the acceptance of this gift that makes this life worth living.  We have to remember that the plan of salvation isn’t something that we should consider confusing.  The plan is simple we ask Jesus to come into our hearts and free us from our trespasses.  When you do this you are instantly forgiven.  You do not have to work to earn the love.  You just have to ask and it is given. 

When we ask Jesus for the gift of salvation you will start to notice how much your life will change.  The things that you do for God will be the most important things that you do.   As you go out serving God you come to realize that you are an instrument that Jesus is using to reach others.  Your life becomes important not only for yourself but for others.  The more that people see your life changed the more they want to hear your story.  It is through our story that we are able to help others leave their confusion and create a meaning full life. 

Prayer:

We praise you for your love.  We thank you for your sacrifice.  We thank you for clearing our minds of confusion.  We ask that you use us as an instrument of your love and peace.  We ask that you use us as a tool to help others breakdown the wall of confusion.  We ask that you make our life here on earth meaningful.  In the name of the Messiah we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Are you lost in confusion about the love and power of God?  Are you confused about how God can love you with the trespasses that you have made?  Are you willing to leave that confusion behind so that you can be free from your trespasses?  Are you living your life as an instrument of truth, peace and love for God?  What do you need to do today so that your life will be meaningful?

Balancing the Good with the Bad

Verses:  Ecclesiastes 11:7-10

My thoughts about the verses:

Have you ever played on a teeter-totter?  You and a friend try to make each other rise up and down from the ground into the air.  The closer you are to the same weight the more balanced the ride.  Yet, as the weight gets larger in distance the whole game changes, the teeter-totter gets imbalanced.  One person is usually up in the air a whole lot longer than the other.  The one person that is smaller has to do a lot more to get the other person in the air.  It can get even crazier if more than one person jumps on one side of the teeter-totter.  This usually leads to one person just stuck up in the air.

Which do you think is more fun for all involved?  Do we believe someone that is left up in the air is having a lot of fun?  When I was in school this even became a way of bullying.  I can remember the one time that a whole group of kids jumped on the other side and had me dangling from the air.  I couldn’t make it come down at all.  There I was stuck up in the air and everyone laughing at me. 

We have to look at life the same way.  Sometimes we equally do the same amount of good things that God has blessed us with yet at the same time we do bad things.  Yet, there are people who do nothing but things that we will have to account for at judgement.  Then there are people that live a life dedicated to Jesus.

Now going on the theory of the teeter-totter if everything is equal we have the same momentum on both sides.  Yet, when it is our life on the line do we want to maintain equality?  When it stays balanced it means that we enjoy the goodness of life yet we do things that keep us astray from God.  We have good days when we only do positive things for the glory of God.  We also have days that we go astray.  We teeter between doing well and falling to our temptations.  Yet, we are always struggling to keep our feet firm on the ground.

Then there are those people that are on the teeter-totter and stuck up in the air.  They have let the things that lead to judgment, weigh them down.  Instead of doing the good God has given us in moderation.  They have over indulged.  They have allowed temptation to take control of their life.   They are trying to balance the world on their own.  Yet, they have found that they do not have the strength to get themselves back down on the ground.  They often times do not even realize that they are where they are on the teeter totter of life.  Once they do a lot of times they are okay where there are.  Yet, many who find this out want to change where they are so that they can get their feet flat on the ground.

Those that have discovered that they need help to change their lives have the best help of all.  Those that do not come to that understanding will face judgment on their own.  The people that have come to the conclusion that they need to change and let their temptations slip away have hope.  Jesus is waiting to jump on their side to bring them back into the fold.  If they ask Jesus to come into their life they will no longer be stuck in the air.  They become Christians with Jesus helping them equalize their life.

What happens when we open our hearts to Jesus?  Does our life return to an equally balanced state?  When we ask Jesus into our life things change forever.  No longer are we stuck in the air falling to our temptations all the time.  Instead Jesus jumps on our side of the teeter-totter of life.  When this happens our feet are firm on the ground.  We are no longer at equilibrium. 

Does this mean that we will never sin?  I would love to answer yes to this question.  Yet, the answer is no, we will sin.  Here is the difference when we have Jesus in our life we are covered with the saving grace of the blood of the perfect lamb.  Yes we will sin but we will not be going through it all alone.  Instead Jesus is there helping us get back firm on the ground. 

There are times when our teeter-totter is perfectly balanced.  Does this mean that Jesus has gotten off our side of the scale?  The answer is no.  Jesus is still there with us, yet we have chosen to do badly.  It is in those equal times in our life that we as Christians need to call out to Jesus.  We need to turn over what has led us to be tempted.  You will soon find if you do this you will again return to the time your feet are planted firm on the ground.

  

Prayer:

We parse you God for your ever enduring love.  We praise you for the strength that you give us each day.  We thank you for your life saving death and resurrection.  Help us to stop the teetering of life.  We ask that you come into our heart and cleanse us from our trespasses.  In the name of the Messiah we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Have you accepted Jesus in your life?  Are you stuck in the air because of your acceptance of temptations in your life?  Have you asked Jesus to help you get your feet firm on the found?  What do you need to change today so that you can live with the peace that comes from the saving grace of Jesus?

Sow the Seeds of the Good News

Verses:  Ecclesiastes 11:1-6

My thoughts about the verses:

When I read this I thought about the many years that I helped my grandfather in his garden.  You never knew from one year to the next how the crop would be.  One year you might plant and get just a few vegetables to harvest.  The next year you plant the same amount and it becomes an over abundant crop.

I will never forget the year that my grandfather planted his potato crop.  He always put the potatoes in the last two or three rows of his garden.  This one particular year every time you would pull up a plant there would be 5-10 potatoes.  My dad was there for several days digging up potatoes.  They just kept coming and coming.  My grandfather had enough potatoes for the winter and we all had tons of potatoes.  It was the year that everyone on the street got potatoes.  There were still tons by the time he gave everyone all they wanted.

Then there was the time that he planted tomatoes.  He absolutely tomatoes and the first rows of his garden would be plant after plant of tomatoes.  He usually got enough to get us all through the summer.  My grandmother would can quite a few tomatoes but it would never last all winter.  The year that I will never forget is when the tomatoes plants just started to produce tomato after tomato.  I can remember he started giving those away like the potatoes.  Then my poor grandmother painstakingly took days to can all these tomatoes.  She froze tomatoes.  She cooked with tomatoes.  I can remember a few years of having tomatoes that had been canned from this one harvest.

Here is the point I am getting at you never know what you are going to get when you plant.  You might just get enough for your family to enjoy.  Other times you will get more than you ever thought possible.  It is those years that you share your crop with others that you are close too.  You do not keep it to yourself because you want to bless people the same way you have been blessed.

How is it that we as Christians do not follow this same rule?  We are all given more than we can ever harvest.  Christians are blessed with knowing that they have the gift of everlasting life.  We have not only what we have but what others need. Yet do we share this with others?  Do we keep the love that Jesus gives us to ourselves?

We need to remember that Jesus calls us to share the Good News.  We are to tell people how much Jesus loves them.  We are not to keep the gift to ourselves.  We need to sow the seed of salvation.

Imagine what would have happened if the person that first taught you about Jesus never did.  Where would you be today?  Would you still be the Christian you are today?  I know that if I had not been taught about Jesus when I was young that it is quite possible that I would have never found my salvation. When I came out of the closet kicking and screaming I was isolated by the same people.  Yet, because they taught me about Jesus and I had accepted the gift I knew I wasn’t alone.  It was their problem not my problem.  Jesus loved me just the way I was created.  I didn’t have to worry about what they said because I was free through the power of the blood.

When you think back to that person that taught you about God are you not motivated to share the Good News?  We never know what God will lead us to do.  We might reach someone today that has never heard the Good News.  We might touch the heart of someone that feels isolated from God and the Church.  We have to remember that we have to sow the seeds of Good News. 

Plant the seeds that God has given you.  Share the story of salvation.  Live your life letting others see the love of Jesus.  Just like plants need water the seed of the Good News needs our story.  As I write this I wonder is there someone that needed to hear that God loved them.  Did they read this today and accept Jesus.  Did they let go of the isolation that others have placed them in.  It is humbling to know that God may use me in this way.  We have to remember we might sow the seed, we might give it water but it is Jesus that gives it new life.  Take on your commission and spread the Good News so that Jesus can give new life to the seed that you have sown.

Prayer:

We thank you Jesus for your love.  We praise you for your gift of New Life.  We praise you God for your love and strength.  Help us to spread the Good News.  Help us show others through our example the New Life that you have given to us.  We ask that you move in the hearts of those we reach today so that they might find the same love that we have from you.  In the name of the Messiah we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Have you accepted the Good News?  Are you spreading the Good News throughout the world?  Are you living your life as an example so that people can see the gift Jesus has given us?  Are you planting the seed so Jesus can grow the New Life in someone’s life today?  If you are not doing these things is today the day your start?

Making Wise Decisions in Your Life

Verses:  Ecclesiastes 10:1-20

My thoughts about the verses:

We all need to start this devotion by thinking of the most foolish thing that we have ever done.  Now think of the wisest decisions that you have ever done.  Which one are you more apt to tell people?  Why do we decide which one of those moments we will share with someone else?

Think about any sitcom that you have watched that just made you bend over double in laughter.  Does it make you laugh because you have been in the same situation?  At the time that the situation was happening you thought I am doing this the right way.  Then you come to realize that you made an absolutely foolish decision.  In fact, people that saw it or hear about it can’t even imagine how foolish a decision you made. 

We have to remember that we are to live our life making wise decision.  We shouldn’t be ashamed of what we do.  When we look back at the foolish things we do we often don’t admit that we actually did them.  Then when we do admit it we are like I can’t believe I did it at the time and often it makes us chuckle from our own foolishness.

It reminds me of the game “Never Had.”  People ask questions to others in the party if they never had done something.  The more crazy the question the funnier it will be.  Those that have done what the question asked raise their hand.  Then everyone starts to smile and laugh because they find out secrets about people that they never would have thought the person would have done.  It is even funnier if only one person raises their hand.

As you play the game you start to realize that you have really made some crazy decisions in your life.  You made decisions that you wish you could go back and change.  When you are the only one that answers the question you even feel more foolish.  We feel if others have made the same mistakes that we are not that bad off.

Yet, how do we base how wise we are.  Do you base it on a percentage of wise decisions?  Do we base it on how many times we made foolish decisions?  Do we base it on what others have done in the same situation?  Do we base it on how much the decision affects our life?  Are we truly willing to accept that we make a lot of foolish decisions?

If you read the scripture closely you can see how every decision that you make is important.  We have to be careful what we do each and every day.  We have to understand that foolish decisions can take us down roads that we can never come back from.  Just think about all the people that go to jail just because of one foolish decision.  Do you think they wished they had done things differently?

We need to remember the decision that we have to be most careful when making is whether or not to ask Jesus in our life.  Have you made this decision wisely or foolishly?  Have you asked Jesus to come into your life?  Do you realize that as long as you’re a live you can make this decision wisely?  Yet, we have to remember we never know how long we will live.  Why not decide the wise choice and ask God in our life today.

Prayer:

We praise you God for your love.  We thank you for the gift of wisdom.  We ask right now that you help us make wise decisions.  Help us to not make foolish decisions.  In the name of the Savior we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Have you made the wisest choice to ask God in your life?  Have you done foolish things that you wished you could change?  Are you ready to make wise decisions the rest of your life?

A Life Under Siege

Verses:  Ecclesiastes 9:13-18

My thoughts about the verses:

This scripture talks about the wisdom one man gave to a town to save them from a siege.  The villagers were able to overcome the situation because the poor man who was wise outsmarted a foolish king.  Yet, the sad part is that no one knows the man’s name.  They remember him more for being a poor man instead of a man that saved the whole city.

Our lives are much like this city we are under siege from various attackers.  Some of the attackers are actual people.  Other attackers are the transgressions that we ourselves have committed.  Sometimes the attackers come from a source that we cannot identify.  Yet, we have to remember that we have to be wise in all of these attacks.

I want to start with an attack that is close to my heart and body.  There are many of us that are under siege by chronic diseases.  We feel as if we are fighting a no win situation.  We deal with pain, nausea, and fatigue.  We feel as if our bodies are fighting against us and there is this desire to give up and let it win.  Then there is that drive to prove that we can survive.  The push is to be victorious over the diseases that siege our body.  It is those moments that we wisely ask God for help.  We ask for God to help us with our pains.  We ask God to guide us.  We ask God to be with us and assist us through our disease.  We forget the siege and concentrate on the victory which comes from God.

The second attacker that I want to talk about is the sieges that come from people.  People try to convince us that we are less than human.  We have people who judge us and try to make us doubt our relationship with God.  We have people that physically and emotionally sabotage us and our life.  We deal with people that use the word of God against us.  Yet, a wise person knows that God loves them no matter what.  It doesn’t matter what people say God is there for all that ask Jesus in their life.  We have to look at things through the eyes of a wise person.  Accepting that people may be against you but they can never completely take control of you as long as you have God.  We have to walk with our eyes focused on God so that we can overcome the daily attacks by the outside world.

The last attacker is we.  Now this is the harder attacker to defend ourselves against.  We do things each day that put a wedge between our relationship with God and ourselves.  We allow the words of others to feel our minds with thoughts of separation from the most high.  We allow stress to feel our minds with worry and doubt.  We fear that we will push God away because of who we are.  We have to understand that we have a power higher than us that can help us through this battle.  We are not fighting this alone.  God does not push us away.  

We have to remember that when God is with us nothing can separate us from God.  God doesn’t look at who we are God only asks for us to believe.  When we believe then we have the shield that we need to fight all of our attackers.  We have to go wisely into battle knowing that God loves us.  We have to believe with our heart and mind that God will always be there no matter what. 

When we make these wise decisions we are like the poor wise man.  Though we are surrounded by many attackers with have the strength to overcome.  We can wisely choose to follow God throughout our life.  We can accept that no matter what happens God will be there with us.  We need to wisely make our choices and listen to what God says to us.  In the end, we learn that it was our faith that led us to the victories that we achieve.  The wisest decision that anyone can make is to accept God. 

Prayer:

We thank you God for your love.  We praise you for always being with us.  Help us to make wise decisions.  Help us to remember that you are always there with us.  Help us remember that we need you in our life.  In the name of the Holy One we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Have you made the wise choice to accept God in your life?  Do you have the knowledge that God is with you in all things?   Are you willing to make wise choices each and every day?

Our Mortal Life Will Come to an End

Verses:  Ecclesiastes 9:1-12

My thoughts about the verses:

How many of you remember the Golden Girls episode where they decide to freeze their heads if they died.  Rose who was facing surgery wanted to be with the girls no matter what.  So they decided that they would all have their heads frozen if they were to die.  Rose coming out of anesthesia and as she does she thinks that she has woken up a hundred years after her death.  In her drug induced state all four of them have had their heads thawed.  Yet only Sophia who tipped the person that was freezing the heads has a new body.  If you haven’t seen the episode or especially this scene I would suggest it. 

Haven’t we all at one time or another wished that our loved ones would not pass away?  We want this to be with us forever.  Yet, no matter how good you are.  No matter how bad you have been.  No matter what you did in life.  We all face the same end...Death.

Death comes in many different ways.  Some people live a long healthy life and one day they just do not wake from their sleep.  Others die tragically from the hands of others.  Other people die after long illnesses.  There are people who die when they are old.  There are people who die as infants. 

The hardest things about all these situations are the people that are left behind.  The person who died doesn’t have to live through the loss and pain that loved ones feel because they have passed on.  Yet, there is something that you will see different by families who know their loved ones accepted Christ.  They have an inner peace.  It doesn’t mean that they don’t grieve.  The difference is they know that if they too have Christ that they will one day join their loved one.

Those that have Christ in their life have the same peace.  They are ready at any time to go home.  They spend their time doing thing for others.  They are not worried about death.  They face their death in a different way. 

Those that do not know Christ do not have inner peace.  Many times they are totally obsessed with death.  In fact, they would love to have their head frozen so that they could live forever.  They have a harder time when their loved ones die.  They mourn because they do not understand the peace that comes from being a Christian. 

The one thing that we need to learn is that even though we die her on earth we can live eternally.  When we accept Jesus in our life we receive salvation from all the transgressions that we ever did or will do.  We are promised that we will join God in Heaven.  We are promised a life of joy.  This life may not be here on Earth.  We are insured it will be in our afterlife.

I do want to share that this blog and scripture is something to be depressed about.  It is actually a call to action.  This is a call to accept Jesus so that you can receive the gift of everlasting life.  We all are offered the gift yet only those that accept it will receive it.

Prayer:

We praise you God.  We thank you for the inner peace that you freely give us.  We ask that you help us accept your gift of eternal life.  We ask that you move within our friends and family so that they will come to know you.  In the name of the Risen Savior we pray.  Amen

Questions:

Are you worried about your death?  Have you accepted God in your life?  Do you feel the inner peace that comes from knowing Jesus as your Savior?

Only God Knows All the Answers of Life

Verses:  Ecclesiastes 8:10-17

My thoughts about the verses:

When I read this it reminded me of a seek and find puzzle.  The words are all there for you to find.  Yet, they are scrambled in a way to make it almost impossible to complete.  As you find words and start drawing a line through the letters it gets more and more complicated.  It is like the lines start playing against you.  You start seeing things that aren’t there.  You start missing the simple words because the lines distort the letters.

Isn’t that the way we see our life sometimes?  The more you learn the more you don’t understand.  As you learn things the more you become confused about life.  You face situations that seem impossible to truly figure out.  You think you know the answer only to find that you don’t know it.  No matter how wise you are there will always be questions that you never will be able to answer.

Just look at medicine.  There are so many illnesses that physicians cannot figure out how to eliminate.  Many they can’t even figure out what causes them.  They gather information and think they have the answer yet they find the information has led them in a circle.  They do research studies after research studies yet they get so bogged down with information that they miss what is right before them.

Only God knows the answer to all things that we cannot understand.  God doesn’t try to keep secrets from us.  Yet, we as humans can never fully understand all there is about the universe.  We can learn bits and pieces of it.  Yet, there is no one human that can comprehend what God knows.  We can try but we are not able to solve all the problems on our own.

Just look back over time and see how things have changed.  Just imagine what Ancient Romans would have thought about our motorized chariots (cars).  The car did not come from the mind of one person.  It took generation upon generation of inventions to lead to the fast moving machines of today.  Just think about the changes that we have seen over the last few years.  Do you think that our ancestors imagined cars that would run off of computers? 

See over time more and more discoveries are made.  Those individual discoveries lead to futuristic advances.  Yet, the process of creating doesn’t just come from one person it comes from teams of people that work years to solve one problem.  The sad part is that when you solve one problem you often create another problem.  Who would have thought that the car would lead to a time when our land would be in jeopardy because of oil fields? 

We have to understand that there is a higher power.  God knows everything that has happened and will happen.  We must trust that God will provide us with the answers that we need to survive the world today.  We have to come to a point where we stop trying to solve the questions ourselves and listen to what God has to say.

As we read the Bible (which also took generations to write) we learn of a loving and caring God.  God created us and wants a relationship with us.  This lesson has been very hard for so many to understand.  They want to add more to the story.  They want to find the information that is hidden in the Bible.  Instead of reading the stories and asking for God’s help understanding what God says?  Instead many listen to what others say and start to doubt what God is saying to them. 

So many people spend so much energy listening to the rhetoric of society that they miss the very truth that is right in front of their eyes.  They miss the fact that God gave us the path that we need to follow.  They miss the fact that we all can receive the same gift.  They miss the fact that we are equal and in the same need of salvation.

Instead of spending our time listening to what others say we need to take the time to read what God says.  We need to offer our voices up in prayer and praise for the One on High.  We need to stop trying to solve all of our problems.  We need to understand that the only true way to have peace is through accepting Jesus in our life.

God hasn’t made the path to salvation a seek and find puzzle.  The answers are as clear as day.  Yet, we as a people do not want to take anything at face value.  We need to understand that God wants to be in relationship with us. 

When you come to understand this then you are able to see that there is only one true path to follow.  That path goes straight to the cross.  We have to humble ourselves and see that we need to ask Jesus in our life.  Once we have asked Jesus in our life things will change.  We will no longer be fighting against God but will be helping others find God.  Our life will be worth more than it ever was before. 

We may not know the whole picture but we do know the piece that completes the puzzle.  Simply if you haven’t asked Jesus in your life you need to consider if that is the step that you need to make today.  Once you have Jesus in your life things will change forever.  Your fears and doubts will start to fade.  You will at last know what you needed most.  Your knowledge will be expanded because you will have come to the point that you understand

Prayer:

We praise you for your love.  We thank you for giving us the answer to the most important question in our life.  Help us give ourselves over to you.  Help us accept you in our life.  Help us stop listening to people that will lead us astray and start walking with you.  In the name of the Almighty we pray.  Amen

Questions:

We have to stop and listen to what God is trying to tell us.  Is God telling you to put your faith in the one Most High?  Is God telling you to share the story of salvation to others?  Is God telling you to be a voice of justice for the world?  We have to listen and discover exactly what God is trying to teach us.  Is today the day that you listen to what God says and do what you are asked?