Live Free with Josh Howerton - Do Life God's Way | Ep. 356 | Monday, June 17, 2024

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

Join us this week as we delve into King Solomon's writings. Through his words, we discover a profound truth: knowing what is right and actually doing it are often two different things. As we explore Solomon's insights, we find him returning to a fundamental principle: Lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways, acknowledge God. For more information, visit lakepointe.church/dailydrive

Thanks for tuning in to today's Daily Drive with Lake Point Church, a daily dose of God's Word for your morning drive. When the word, not the world, becomes the majority of your week, your life will start to change. For that reason, our prayer is that God will speak to you through today's devotional. For more digital content to feed your faith, visit lakepoint.comit. Church slash daily drive. And now let's dive in to today's devotional. Hey, thanks for joining us on the Daily Drive podcast on this Monday. My name is Bro, and we spend a few minutes every weekday diving into God's Word together. And you know, a whole bunch of you just build this into the regular rhythm of your day.

Thanks for doing that. And I pray every day that it's helpful to you as you pursue a relationship with the one who created you and created me to do life with him. Let me ask you all, have you ever snuck a peek at someone's diary or journal? Be honest. You ever scroll through someone else's text messages on their phone? It's pretty fascinating what you can learn about a person while reading things that are unvarnished, vulnerable, and deeply personal. Well, thousands of years ago, an extremely wealthy guy named Solomon wrote down his thoughts,

and he was a guy who was powerful and charismatic and creative and wise and at the end of his life. He was very honest, transparent, broken, and repentant. And the cool thing is, we don't have to sneak a peek in his job. journal, it's right there out in the open for everybody to read. It's a book in the Old Testament of the Bible called Ecclesiastes, and as an old man, Solomon gets super vulnerable. He talks about his mistakes, his regrets, and all of his misguided wanderings. And I thought that maybe we could take a look at it a little bit every day and maybe apply some of it in a proactive, a preventative

kind of way, because when you read it, you're going to discover some ways to get life really right and some ways to get life really wrong. I did a series years ago that I called Five Easy Ways to Wreck Your Life. Now, we did it in kind of a fun, infomercial kind of way, but we took things that Solomon said straight out of his journal. So what I would like to do, I'd like to revisit some of that. And as we do this, we will hear him say, listen, don't do what I did. Don't pursue happiness and fulfillment the way I did it.

Don't look at relationships the way I did. Don't settle for something other than an intimate journey with the lover of your soul. I'm begging you. Don't chase the wind like I did. Don't run after stuff that can't deliver. Don't let success and other people's approval consume you. Never ever isolate yourself from healthy community. Don't drive through your life without guardrails. Have some boundaries in your life. Pursue God's wisdom. And those of you who are young, please, please, please don't ignore God. Remember your creator when you're young. Don't live like he doesn't exist. Please, please, please. Don't do what I did and wreck your life.

It is commentary on Ecclesiastes. Michael Eaton writes, Ecclesiastes defends the life of faith and a generous God by pointing to the grimness of the alternative. Anybody got plans to sit on the beach or laying a hammock and read a novel this summer? Yeah, you ever tempted it like I am to skip to the last page to see how it all ends? Now, if this were a novel, there's no way I would do this, but since it's not, it's just a plain honest,

open, vulnerable reflections of a man's life. If you don't mind, I want us to go to the last page and see the conclusion first, and I promise, no spoiler alert here, it's not going to ruin it all for you. I just think that if we can see where Solomon eventually lands as we get started, then maybe it will

shed a different light on the rest of it for us. This is where he landed after he wrecked his life. Ecclesiastes 12, verse 13. Now all has been heard. Here's the conclusion of the matter. Fear God and keep his commandant. for this is the duty of every human being.

You see, and when all is said and done, life is about walking with God. Respect his authority. Do life his way. Do life with him. Chase after him. Embrace the truth of his wisdom. Let his love embrace you.

Get to know him as your father. Let him guide your steps, surrender to his love. Find yourself in him. Don't do what I did. Don't wreck your life. You walk with God and reach your full potential. do life his way and no real freedom. You walk with God and no deep, rich meeting all the days of your fleeting life under the sun.

Solomon's life began with such promise. You can read all about him in First Kings in the Old Testament of the Bible. He was the second son of David and Bathsheba, smart, handsome, charismatic, love God. He was handed the kingdom from his father. And one night God comes to him in a dream and tells him, ask me for anything, and I'll give it to you. And Solomon was really humble. He said, honestly, Lord, I don't. completely overwhelmed. I'm going to need your wisdom to govern and lead these people. Just give

me your wisdom. That's what I want. Well, God was thrilled with that selfless request, so he tells him that he was going to make him uncommonly wise so that he could lead well. And on top of that, that God said, I'm going to bless you with more wealth and on all the stuff. When Solomon was young and centered on his dependent relationship with God, he wrote things like the song of songs about true love and how when a man and a woman and God all become one, it's a beautiful thing. When he was walking with God, when he was chasing after God, he wrote a lot of the incredible book of Proverbs filled with so much godly wisdom. But you know as well as I do. It's one thing to have wisdom. Quite another to apply it to your own life, isn't it? I mean, you can know

and expouse great principles about living and never actually live them yourself. You can talk so much about like working out, that it almost feels like you are actually working out, even though you never actually do. And as a teacher, I really know the danger of this. You can talk a good game. You can unpack powerful truth. You can know all the right principles. You can expouse all the right wisdom kind of stuff. And you can still wreck your own life. You see, Solomon Street became his weakness. Instead of embracing the wisdom that God gave him, he began to trust his own. Instead of seeking after God, it began seeking after pleasure, and the pursuit of self-centered happiness that became His God. And I guess, I guess you could blame it on the women in his life. Isn't that

what most guys do, starting with Adam? This woman, this woman you gave me, if it wasn't for her, I mean, us guys could be pathetic sometimes. Now, of course, it was not her fault. It was Adam's own direct disobedience toward God that caused his problems. But look at what it says about Solomon in 1 Kings chapter 11. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women. Besides Pharaoh's daughter, he married women from Moab, Ammon, Edom, Sidon, and from among the Hittites. The Lord had clearly instructed the people of Israel, you must not marry them because they will turn your hearts to their gods.

Yet Solomon insisted, he insisted, on loving them anyway. He had 700 wives of royal birth and 300 concubis, just a little bit out of control, you think? And in fact, it says this, they did turn his heart away from the Lord. In Solomon's old age, they turned his heart to worship other gods instead of being completely faithful to the Lord as God as his father, David, had been. And so now, at the end of his life, Solomon's saying, don't do what I did, walk with God, let nothing, let no one pull your heart away from him, do life his way. When you let unbridled pleasure drive your life, you're heading for a train wreck. That's his conclusion. Now, let's check out the introduction.

This is how the book begins. And when you read these first words, I'm telling you, it's going to grip you, it will excite you, you will not want to put the book of Ecclesiastes down. It's what writers call a literary hook where you say, oh yeah, man, this is going to be so good. Tell me more. Here's how it starts. These are the words of the teacher, King David's son, who ruled in Jerusalem. Everything is meaningless. Completely. meaningless. How's that? For a gripping literary hook. Makes you want to read on, right? Looking for a motivational speaker for your next corporate gathering? Coaches want someone to come in the locker room and fire up your team? You want somebody to entertain your kid's birthday party? Solomon, he might not be

your guy. Solomon liked that word meaningless a lot. He uses it 38 times in Ecclesiastes as he writes about life under the sun. And the Hebrew word translated for meaningless or vanity is the word Habel, which means emptiness, futility, a vapor that vanishes quickly and leaves nothing behind. And so Solomon starts by saying, as an old man, now looking back on my life, I can tell you that life apart from God is Habel, like chasing the wind. It's futile. It's a vapor. It's a fog. It's like a, it's like popping of soap bubble, and there's just nothing left. Solomon's failure to trust God, rather than his own wisdom had not only consequences in his own life

but it had a tragic impact on the whole nation I mean the consequences of our actions often touch other people right there really is a positive and a negative ripple effect and many times we are blind to the damages doing to other people and ourselves and he was drifting away from God he was trusting in his own wisdom by the way he's the guy who earlier wrote those famous words in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6

trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight and now he's saying I wish I'd never stop doing that I wish that I never wrecked the kingdom like I did I wish I'd never wrecked my life the way I did

so Ecclesiastes is kind of like him saying let me repeat this trust in the Lord with all your heart lean not on your own understanding in all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight never stop walking with him. Life apart from him is meaningless.

So you up for a journey where we can learn five easy ways to wreck your life? We'll make it fun, we'll make it short each day, and perhaps the Holy Spirit of God will use our time together and this unvarnished journal to mark our lives in a very positive, proactive, and powerful way. I'll see you back tomorrow. I hope you have a great day. Thanks for tuning in today. For more biblical teaching and worship,

join us for our church online live weekend services on Saturdays at 5 p.m. and Sundays at 9.30 and 11 a.m. Central Standard Time. For more information, visit lakepoint.com. Church slash daily drive.