“Do you take me for a fool???!” is the question people angrily ask (or at least think) if they believe they’ve been rudely underestimated. Yet as we heard last Sunday morning, that’s exactly what God calls the man in the Lord Jesus’ parable in Luke ch 12. This was someone who made a lot of money and decided to sit back to enjoy his leisure without being ‘rich’ towards God. There certainly is an important message about money and possessions in the parable, but we can apply it even further: the man failed to consider God in any of his choices, including his wealth.
All of us want to live lives that thrive rather than fade. As we heard from Psalm 1 on Sunday evening, the key to thriving is actually quite clear:
“Blessed is the one
who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take
or sit in the company of mockers,
but whose delight is in the law of the LORD,
and who meditates on his law day and night.” (Psalm 1:1,2)
In other words, we thrive by delighting in thinking about and applying God’s way of living rather than the world’s way of living.
That will certainly mean not being convinced by the picture-perfect ideas that advertisers try to sell us which have only shallow answers to a broken world. Yet it also means turning our back on sin and its priorities and putting our faith in Jesus to save us, following Him as Lord.
If that all sounds too simplistic, just ask yourself the basic question:
“1000 years from now what’s going to matter the most and which will turn out to be the most foolish – God’s way or the world’s way?”
Spencer Shaw