Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “The fear of not having enough”
Our Bible verse for today: “The one who loves money will never have enough money to make him happy. It is the same for the one who loves to get many things. This also is for nothing.” Ecclesiastes 5:10 (NLV)
Our thought for today: “Our focus is wrong.”
In the days to come we will begin to consider God’s answer to our fear of not having enough. But before we move on to that, I want to be sure we’ve truly understood and acknowledged the problem we’re faced with.
A big problem for Christians is that we often claim things to be true of ourselves which are not really true. This issue of who or what we truly put our trust in is a case in point. Most of us say that God is our Provider and that we trust Him to take care of us. We say that, but we don’t really believe it. Or at least, we don’t live as if we really believe it. We say we trust in God for our daily bread, but then we allow ourselves to be a workaholic as we strive to earn as much as we can. We say we trust in God for our financial future, but then we obsess about savings accounts and retirement plans and how we’re going to afford the latest gidget or gadget, a new car and a bigger house. We say we trust in God, but our focus is usually on jobs and incomes and savings accounts and possessions.
Now don’t get me wrong, working hard, earning as much as we can, building up savings, and having a plan for retirement are all good things – we should do them. But we are not to trust in them. And therein lies the problem for most of us. Truth-be-told, in actual practice, we do trust in them more than we trust in God. We just don’t admit it.
So let’s set aside the God-talk, the religious clichés, and the false piety and admit how much of a hold money and possessions really do have on our hearts. It’s only when we honestly admit a problem that we can then begin to deal with it.
King Solomon was honest about it. He was the richest man in the world in his day. For most of his adult life he indulged himself in every conceivable pleasure and denied himself no creature comfort. But he finally came to the point of realizing how empty such a life was and how misplaced his focus had been. That’s what we’re reading not just in Ecclesiastes 5:10, but in the entire book of Ecclesiastes. Solomon learned that it didn’t matter how much he had because it was never enough. Deep inside there was always the nagging concern that regardless of what he already had, he still needed something more.
The fear of not having enough, and the doubts and anxiety that come with it, can be suffocating. It leaves us feeling dissatisfied, unhappy, and worried about the future. Worse, at a very deep level, it takes our focus off of God and onto the things of this world.
Despite what we claim to be true about our faith and about our focus if we’re honest we have to admit that our concern for the things of this life, and our obsessive focus on them, is a big problem that has to be dealt with.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 