Friday, April 19, 2024

"Gaining the World"

 "For there is a man whose labour is in wisdom, and in knowledge, and in equity; yet to a man that hath not therein shall he leave it for his portion. This also is vanity and a great evil." (Ecclesiastes 2:21 KJV) 

  "Then, calling the crowd to join his disciples, he said, "If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will save it. And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul? If anyone is ashamed of me and my message in these adulterous and sinful days, the Son of Man will be ashamed of that person when he returns in the glory of his Father and with the holy angels."" (Mark 8:34-38 NLT)

 There are those that work towards the riches of this world, and there are those that might be handed the riches of this world; one will sacrifice something while gathering and storing up, while the other will be wasteful and waste his life away. Which one might be the most gainful? Better yet, which one will lose the most? 

 Not that I have been a good steward of what God has blessed me with, because I neglect so much of what I have, it seems as though I don't care sometimes what might happen to it, or if it really even matters if it gets thrown away. We gather stuff, we might think we need, but when it needs our care, we seem to not need it much anymore. (At least that is the way it seems!) 

 If we really want something to care about in the world, it needs to be the people that God places into our lives! However you decide you are care for people, it is something that you need to pray about and make sure God is leading you and love is the motivation of your heart. The only reason that I say that, is that we tend to take the credit for doing things, when all the credit needs to go to God! 

 Something we might not think that much about, because we feel as though we are doing good, so we start feeling good about doing good, as if we are good for doing it! Not so good! We are God's servant, and we need to keep that first and forefront the reason that we do what we do, to please our King! 

 Before you think this is about money and wealth, it is more about doing good and right, for God. The whole point that brought Jesus to share what He called the crowd to join the disciples for to hear, was all about seeing things from God's point of view, and not man's...

 "Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of the religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead. As he talked about this openly with his disciples, Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things. Jesus turned around and looked at his disciples, then reprimanded Peter. "Get away from me, Satan!" he said. "You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's."" (Mark 8:31-33 NLT) 

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