| Good morning everyone, Our theme for this month: “Be smart, be strategic” Our Bible verse for today: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” Ecclesiastes 12:13 (NIV) Our thought for today: “Don’t get lost like Solomon” The book of Ecclesiastes is essentially eleven and one-half chapters of remorse and regret, ending with the insightful and succinct observation from King Solomon recorded in 12:13 (above). Solomon was not only the richest and most powerful man of his day, but at an early age he had also been endowed with godly wisdom beyond that of anyone else. He was the wisest, richest, most powerful man in the world – but he blew it. Instead of staying focused on honoring God and blessing others with the way he used his wisdom, power, and riches, he instead lost his way and spent much of his adult life pursuing worldly pleasures. In today’s culture we would describe it as a life of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Ecclesiastes was written towards the end of his life and is essentially his memoir. In it, he writes mostly about the foolishness of his choices. What was Solomon’s problem? How did he get so off track in life? The answer is that he wasn’t smart or strategic. He didn’t have a strategy designed to keep him focused on the things that really mattered and which were most important. A “strategy” is simply a plan designed to help us achieve a desired end. To be “strategic” means that we have identified our overall aim, we have a plan in place to achieve it, and we are then intentional about sticking to that plan. Doing that is smart. Not doing it is not smart (see Solomon’s story). We live in a world today where the pace of life for most people is impossibly busy, and therefore most of us are trying to juggle far too many things at the same time. Beyond that, our world is noisy and cluttered with loud voices, blaring advertisements, and competing agendas. We’re overwhelmed with information, under great pressure from many different and often opposing forces, and stretched way too thin. In such an environment it can be very difficult to stay focused on the things that matter most. All this month we will consider the importance of intentionally staying focused on the things that should matter most to us in life. None of us wants to lose our way and end up wasting years of our lives on worthless pursuits like Solomon did. But to avoid that, we will have to be smart and we will have to be strategic. We’ll spend the month of May considering ways we can do that. God bless, Pastor Jim |
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