This post is part of my ongoing series of writing down my thoughts on the Bible passages I read each day. Some days I hope to have great insight that the Lord gives me, and many days, I will likely struggle through the text and not know what to write down based on what I read. My hope and prayer is that as I make this a habit, just as I did daily writing for so long, that I will improve on my ability to read and understand the passages I’m reading. Please keep in mind that many of these posts may be published late at night or with little time studying and simply be my first thoughts after reading. This is in no way a commentary that one should use to discern the Bible, but my own personal thoughts.
“Put no trust in exhortation; set no vain hopes on robbery; if riches increase, set not your heart on them.”
Money. The Bible says the love of it is the root of all evil. It’s hard to think about the fact that something so common to the everyday man is also the source of the root of all evil.
Does that mean that the thing is evil in itself? No. Simply that there is a way to use it (or misuse it) that becomes evil. It makes me wonder what other things there are in life that are like this. One that comes immediately to mind, as I am less than two weeks out from my own marriage is sex. Sex is a gift that God has given to men and woman to enjoy, yet we have in many cases ruined this gift and given it up to our own greedy desires instead of using it the perfect way God intended it: In the context of a marriage between a man and a woman.
God gives us so many good gifts, yet we constantly give up those gifts for what we perceive to be better gifts from the world. The world and our fleshly desires are great salesmen. They convince us that these other things outside the will of God are what we truly desire, but they distract us from the realization that if God loves us as much as He says he does and proved he did (by dying for us), then there is no way that there is anything or anyone that could offer us more than God himself.
This verse in Psalm 62 reminds me that it’s extremely hard to remain dependant on God alone when the world praises us and offers us all kinds of glory, but we must remain weak and dependant on God. We should not feel pumped up when the world exhorts us. Instead, when the world exhorts us, we should initially be taken aback realizing that any glory that they think we deserve rightly belongs to the Lord.
This is something I majorly need to work on. I will be the first to admit how nice it feels when the world praises me. When others point out good things about me or I am noticed for other reasons. I cannot let this be what drives me to success or I will be chasing a neverending hole that leads only to depression.
I must be sustained and set my heart upon the rock that cannot be moved.