We are a race of human beings with one eye always on the clock and the other on trying to jam everything into competition before time runs out. The entire sports world is seemingly anchored to the last few minutes of every sporting event. The distant voice of the announcer echoes the score with the added comment, “The time is running out for the Lakers. They need a three pointer if they expect to win.” Someone recently suggested that all we need to do is watch the last three minutes of every sporting event to catch the drama and the final score.

Hezekiah was a good king in the line of many bad kings. His desire was to please God and serve Him. He was deathly ill when the Lord sent Isaiah to tell him that his time on earth was running out. Hezekiah pleaded with God to give him more time. God heard his prayer and extended his life for fifteen more years. THAT DOESN’T HAPPEN TO EVERYBODY!

Most of us think very little about the time we have left no matter how old we are. It is only when a serious illness sends us to a hospital that we think about time remaining on this planet.

I believe God calls us to live in TODAY with our eyes on him and our intent to let him lead us.

The question often asked is “what would you do if you knew this were your last day on earth?” Whatever that would be for you would be a good way to live out today. Tell those whom you love that you REALLY DO LOVE THEM….TODAY! Make things right in your life that are wrong.

There is a great quote from George Washington Carver: “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant with the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all these things.”

TIME IS RUNNING OUT!

Jim Smoke

As I read through the life of Solomon this week which took all of two and a half days (compared to the many days covering the life of his father, David) I couldn’t help but think of the song “If I Were A Rich Man” from Fiddler On The Roof. It’s a ballad that daydreams of a life of luxury and is filled with hopes for more than endless days of labor. And any of us can understand the words of this song if we are working for a living and struggling through, day by day. However, the life of Solomon shows me that the grass is not greener on the other side, where there is more wealth and possessions than one could ever possibly need in a lifetime. At the end of the day, look at Solomon - he “did what was evil in the Lord’s sight; he refused to follow the Lord completely” (1 Kings 11:6) and his heart worshipped other gods “instead of trusting only in the Lord his God, as his father, David had done” (1 Kings 11:4). In 1 Kings 11:9 it says that “the Lord was very angry with Solomon, for his heart had turned away from the Lord, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.” The Lord gave Solomon everything - wisdom, riches, and honor. But Solomon forgot the ONE THING, the MAIN THING - God Himself. What can I learn from Solomon? Take heed to the words the Lord gave to Solomon when he dedicated the temple - there are three main things to always pay attention to in life according to 1 Kings 9:6-9:

1. Always “remember” the Lord your God - the Lord in 1 Kings 9:6 tells Solomon that he and his descendants needed to make certain they did not “abandon” God. It’s hard for us to imagine abandoning God. When you look at Solomon’s life, you notice that all his time was spent building this and that. In fact, it says in 1 Kings 9:19 that “he built to his heart’s content in Jerusalem and Lebanon and throughout the entire realm.” He “built up a huge force of chariots and horses” (1 Kings 10:26). And he built up quite a family - 700 wives and 300 concubines - clearly going against the Lord’s command to intermarry. The text says “Yet Solomon insisted on loving them anyway” (1 Kings 11:2). Did he ask the Lord, as David, his father did? It almost seems as though Solomon was caught up in everything BUT the Lord - building, ruling, marrying, displaying his wisdom. It’s a good lesson for me to “remember” the Lord, day by day. Begin the day with the Lord in quiet time, and continue talking with Him, enjoying Him throughout the day.

2. Obey God. The Lord told Solomon that he and his descendants should not disobey his commands and laws (1 Kings 9:6). Obviously Solomon was more interested in what he wanted than what God wanted. He knew not to intermarry according to God’s command, but we learn that “Solomon insisted on loving them anyway” (1 Kings 11:2). There is a great difference that I notice between Solomon and his father, David. Throughout the recorded life of David in the Bible, you find again and again that “David asked the Lord.” I don’t see that as a habit in Solomon’s life. If we will “ask the Lord” it will save us from living out a life of disobedience. It doesn’t mean we won’t sin. And when we do sin we need to confess our sin according to what the Lord says in 1 John 1:9 “But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.” Let us always seek to find out what pleases the Lord and do it with all our heart.

3. Worship God, the One True God. The Lord told Solomon not to ever “go and worship other gods” (1 Kings 9:6). Solomon’s heart was led astray by all his wives and concubines and their foreign gods. He actually worshipped Ashtoreth, the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech, the god of the Ammonites (1 Kings 11:5). I know this is hard to believe especially in light of having the example of his father, David. However, I think we must take this as a warning - oh, how easily the heart is led astray! The text tells us that the wives and concubines “led his heart away from the Lord” (1 Kings 11:3) and “they turned his heart to worship their gods instead of trusting only in the Lord his God, as his father, David” (1 Kings 11:4). Let us be vigilant in our walk with God and not allow anything into our life that can lead us astray and let us pray for God’s grace to give us wisdom to see all of life from His eternal perspective.

All of this makes me think of Hebrews 12:1-2 - they are good words for me today and may they be an encouragement for you: “…let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily hinders our progress. And let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, on whom our faith depends from start to finish.”

There’s always a bit of sadness to move on from the life of David. However, he is such a vibrant character and there is so much of his life to share, that we will experience him again in other places in the Old Testament including parts of his journal found in many of the psalms. This last week we had the opportunity to see his “last words.” He saw himself as “David, the son of Jesse…the man to whom God gave such wonderful success…the man anointed by the God of Jacob…the sweet psalmist of Israel. In the end he saw that God had done great things and he saw himself as the “sweet psalmist.” That phrase speaks volumes about his relationship with the Lord. We may aspire to many things, but what a great final result: the sweet psalmist of Israel. He could have said “I was the king of Israel.” But no—he said that he was the sweet psalmist of Israel.

In God’s economy those things we deem to be the “small” things may be the greatest things of all. To be a king is great here on earth, but perhaps the obscure and seemingly unimportant is what is great in heaven. Perhaps the Lord has called us to what we think is a small place or an unnoticed corner of the world. Perhaps we labor hard in what He has given us to do and no one applauds our work. Perhaps the song in our heart that continues day after day is heard by no earthly person. Those things we hoped to do, the aspirations of what we considered to be “great things for God” never have materialized, and we are doing what we consider to be the “small thing.”

Dear friend, keep running your race in the “Audience of One.” Sing your song to the Lord always, not sometimes. Alan Redpath, in his book The Making Of A Man Of God, says that sometimes God chooses to put his servants to work in the basement rather than the bay window of the church. David, the man after God’s own heart, had to live with a frustrated desire where God said “no” when he wanted to build a temple for the Lord. David did not leave the work of the Lord when God said “no,” but instead did his best at what God had given him to do. At the end of the day it was David who, out of his enjoyment of the fellowship and communion of God, became the “sweet psalmist,” and wrote the music of the psalms which other lovers of God have enjoyed for centuries.

At the end of the day, what will we be able to say we have known of our Lord? Can we say that we communed with Him, loved His Word, and engaged in His work? May we, as we think on the life of David, set our priorities in such a way that we focus on those things that matter most at the end of the day.