Eccl 5 Gotta serve somebody

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

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Ecclesiastes 5:1-20
The Importance of Fearing God
1As you enter the house of God, keep your ears open and your mouth shut! Don't be a fool who doesn't realize that mindless offerings to God are evil. 2And don't make rash promises to God, for he is in heaven, and you are only here on earth. So let your words be few.
3Just as being too busy gives you nightmares, being a fool makes you a blabbermouth.
4So when you make a promise to God, don't delay in following through, for God takes no pleasure in fools. Keep all the promises you make to him. 5It is better to say nothing than to promise something that you don't follow through on. 6In such cases, your mouth is making you sin. And don't defend yourself by telling the Temple messenger that the promise you made was a mistake. That would make God angry, and he might wipe out everything you have achieved.
7Dreaming all the time instead of working is foolishness. And there is ruin in a flood of empty words. Fear God instead.

The Futility of Wealth
8If you see a poor person being oppressed by the powerful and justice being miscarried throughout the land, don't be surprised! For every official is under orders from higher up, and matters of justice only get lost in red tape and bureaucracy. 9Even the king milks the land for his own profit! F4
10Those who love money will never have enough. How absurd to think that wealth brings true happiness! 11The more you have, the more people come to help you spend it. So what is the advantage of wealth—except perhaps to watch it run through your fingers!
12People who work hard sleep well, whether they eat little or much. But the rich are always worrying and seldom get a good night's sleep.
13There is another serious problem I have seen in the world. Riches are sometimes hoarded to the harm of the saver, 14or they are put into risky investments that turn sour, and everything is lost. In the end, there is nothing left to pass on to one's children. 15People who live only for wealth come to the end of their lives as naked and empty-handed as on the day they were born.
16And this, too, is a very serious problem. As people come into this world, so they depart. All their hard work is for nothing. They have been working for the wind, and everything will be swept away. 17Throughout their lives, they live under a cloud—frustrated, discouraged, and angry.
18Even so, I have noticed one thing, at least, that is good. It is good for people to eat well, drink a good glass of wine, and enjoy their work—whatever they do under the sun—for however long God lets them live. 19And it is a good thing to receive wealth from God and the good health to enjoy it. To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life—that is indeed a gift from God. 20People who do this rarely look with sorrow on the past, for God has given them reasons for joy.
FOOTNOTES:F4: The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain.
Copyright Statement: Holy Bible, The New Living Translation

~ Lena’s Journalin’~
As I read this first portion I think of how we as men have so many opinions about pretty much every idea we hear someone speak on. I feel this passage is saying, where God’s word is concerned, don’t throw your opinions out there, keep those type of thoughts to yourself and sort them out to conform to God’s word as the last word. Opinions don’t have a place in God’s house, nor does a vote. God isn’t asking what we think. He’s telling us how to live.
I was telling my little girl the other day that the Bible is God instruction book to us for life. He’s trying to teach and tell us something and then explains it in further detail when we hear preachers/teachers teach us about it. He’s not presenting some idea for our preponderance. He’s giving us truth to live by. We can take or leave it, that’s up to us. If we see it as up for debate or for controversy, we have a heart issue to deal with. Why are we weighing God’s words as though they need us to balance them out? We must balance our lives to conform to his words of truth.
Also do we think God is as a mere man, whom we can trick or slight? He knows our every thought motive and action. The reason we’d make commitments aloud is to bring the powerful agreement of His word into the sphere of our lives, making covenant commitment for life with the Most High. That’s serious business. It’s eternal business. God doesn’t have to have our participation, but He so desires it and we need His more than we can ever know.
It amazes me how often in my mind I try to rise up and defend ungodly thoughts or actions, making excuses for my excuses. I have no defense of my own in God’s presence. He is the only defense I have that means anything. Without the blood of Jesus that was shed for my sins. Excuses and shortcomings I’d be way out in left field. Time to reel me in to the center of His will. Time to stop practicing and begin to play the field of the Lord, the Lord of the Harvest. No excuses, it’s game time. I have no defense in my own excuses, none. In that I’m completely alone, without God. That’s a dangerous place to be in. Anytime one finds himself trying so hard to defend himself, is a time to throw up the hands in surrender! Give it up.
I was thinking of how we as humans go overboard in our sense of responsibility to win or succeed in life. We trust and rely on self and human strength and then hopefully we find it runs out. About that time we run to God for some refueling or help, and we find God uses these instances to recruit us into His work, but our motive was just to obtain a bit of help. His motive is to bring us into the center of His strength. The more we try without His help, the less we succeed.
I’ve seen people decide to follow after the making of more money, making their own way in life, finding provision for their households, etc. This takes time and energy, and many times it is thrown right in the righteous pathway. It is deceptive in that it calls us to responsibility, all the while it is really there to steal away our time with God and of the work of His kingdom.
The Bible is clear, seek 1st His kingdom, and ALL these things will be added. When we do the equation it never figures out, ever. We can’t walk away from His kingdom work and from assembling with believers and from reading His word and be blessed in anything we do. We’ll find the addition equation become a subtraction equation, we can never seem to get ahead. This is the enemy’s # 1 offer to new believers. Come back and serve mammon, that little ”g” (god). Know serving mammon will suck the strength right out of the man, leaving him naked and destitute, and prayerfully, by God’s grace it will bring him back to the very place of seeing his continued need for God’s provision found in the giving of one’s life for the kingdom work in the earth.

Daily Recital Verses -
Psalms 118:24 This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Prov 17:22 A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a broken spirit saps a person's strength.