Monday Reading: Psalm 49:6-10
Key Verse: Psalm 49:6
6 Those who trust in their wealth, and their many riches, boast themselves.
Devotion:
Cultures around the world give rise to differing goals for people when they live in different countries. Even within Europe there are vastly different qualities and standards that people live towards. Here in the UK people do what they can to get to buy a house as soon as they can so they can have their own ‘little castle’ in which to live. Just across the channel people look to rent and not to buy rather spending their money on luxuries around the house. But, sadly, people everywhere are turning away from God and looking towards earthly wealth to try and fulfil their yearnings for stability and peace.
The more that people strive to build up their own wealth, the more they are striving to build themselves up. Just like the people at Babel found that working towards building themselves up to God, man will find that building himself up towards his own god (wealth) will do nothing but leave him short in the end. The more we focus on building ourselves up the less we will focus on building up God within our lives and the less we will find we can walk with Him. When Adam and Eve tried to build themselves up through eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil they found themselves suddenly short of their own expectations.
We cannot take anything earthly with us when we go to be with the Lord but what we leave behind is going to be our legacy. If we leave behind untold earthly riches then that is how people will remember us with many fighting over what we do leave behind. If we leave behind many people who have come to know God through us then we have built up a stronghold of God’s Word that will continue to live on. It really is a case of where we want to build up our riches; whether it is for a little while on earth or forever in heaven. There is nothing wrong with being successful on earth so long as we do not exclude God in favour of our own success.
Points to Ponder:
How do you measure your success?
Are you working for God or for yourself?
