Encounter @ the Chapel
Reverend Fred Knox
“Three Tragic Mistakes
Luke 12:13-21 (NKJV)
Life is more than material goods your relationship with God is more important. Be on guard against greed, a desire for what you don’t have. How do you respond to the constant pressure to buy? Learn to tune out expensive enticements and concentrate on a fulfilled life living in a relationship with God and doing his work.
*Don’t leave God out of the picture. It’s easy for you to think you have the final say. When things don’t go your way, you’re waiting on God, but God doesn’t show up the way you thought he would, or he doesn’t answer you the way you expected him to, you assume you have the final say. You try to manifest and get the answer on your own leaning on your own understanding. No matter how long it takes or what God uses to answer your prayers, let it go and let God. You think because you go to work and you make money that it belongs to you, nothing belongs to you. You have a job because God opened the door. You have a house because God led you to the right person. You have clothes on your back and food to eat, because of God. Nothing belongs to you, you came into the world with nothing, and when you leave you can’t take anything with you. You are never more than one breath away from judgment in eternity. In reality, the final say belongs to God, don’t assume rights that belong to God alone. Don’t get caught up in the possession of things.
*Don’t neglect the need to care for your soul. The body will eventually perish, but the soul lives on. The soul finds satisfaction only in spiritual value. You used to find satisfaction in material things, but your mind and focus are not on God. God has flipped the switch and tells you to focus on spiritual things. You go through life accumulating things many of which are worthless. When death comes your relatives divide your spoils. The world measures achievement by material possessions, but those things don’t bring happiness. To think of life in only material things is foolish because life is not held together by material possessions but by spiritual and eternal things. The soul of a man is made for eternity, thus there can never find satisfaction in material things. What you see around the world with your natural eyes can’t be handled with a natural solution. No one can come up with the answers by themself because the only way you can address the problem is through the word of God. Satisfaction will only come when you give your sins to Jesus and let him be kings of our life and live according to the word of God. It may look like you’re satisfied with material things, but sin is pleasurable for a moment. When you put your trust in material things and you neglect God, what do you have to hold on to?
*Don’t forget about eternity. Are you absorbed in living in pleasure as if you are never going to die? Life is not a joke on this side or the other side of the grave. Your final hour may come at any moment, and it may come swiftly and unannounced. You must never think that when you start out a new day, it is certain that you are going to finish it.
