A Life Worth Living (2 page)

I’m sure that many of us have had similar fantasies. Men who love building can relate to this: “If I had no money restrictions, and I had all the power and means to build and design houses the way I like…” Solomon was the original Bob the Builder! Could he do it? Yes, he could because he had the money!

Solomon built God a temple. Then, the temple was the most expensive building in the world. After that, he built his own house, his palace. Do you know how long he took to build his palace? Seven years! To women, that may be a nightmare! To men who love building, that is a fantasy. Whatever you may fantasise about, this man did! Solomon indulged in every fantasy. He also grew fruit trees and built water pools. He was a great horticulturalist.

Notice that Solomon says in verse 7, “I acquired male and female servants”. So he could enjoy a massage any time he wanted! And in the original Hebrew, “
musical instruments of all kinds”
(verse 8) translates to “concubines of all kinds”. Solomon had concubines of all kinds. The Bible tells us that Solomon had 300 concubines and 700 wives. Solomon was a man who had everything. If there was a downside to all this, it would be that he also had 700 mothers-in-law!

Don’t forget that God gave him wisdom, favour, influence and power to get wealth, but God didn’t give him the results or outcomes of his wealth. God didn’t give him the results or outcomes of his influence. God didn’t give him the results or outcomes of his wisdom and favour. Nonetheless, Solomon’s wisdom and favour came from God.

Verse 9 says:

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So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem…

Solomon became great and whatever he saw and liked, he took. What would men and women give for that! Would you call that a life worth living?

Let’s see how Solomon’s life of fantasy unravels (verses 10–11):

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Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart rejoiced in all my labour; and this was my reward from all my labour.
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Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labour in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun
.

The book of Ecclesiastes is a story of a backslidden man. Solomon was a man who once knew God, but later, even though he still had his God-given gifts, he turned his heart away from God. Here is a man who did everything under the sun and yet despaired of life.

If you only experience things under the sun, you’ll whenever always be unfulfilled.

The lesson here is that whenever your thoughts become earthly and focus on things under the sun, you despair. We must never forget that God is above the sun. When he wrote the book of Proverbs and Song of Solomon, Solomon’s thoughts were heavenly and he spoke about things above the sun. But in Ecclesiastes, we see that he was focused on things below the sun and his life had no more meaning.

If You Live Life ‘Under The Sun’, You’ll Despair

Solomon, the man who experienced everything, leaves us a clue in a phrase that appears throughout the book of Ecclesiastes — “
under the sun”
. Solomon lived life enjoying all earthly pleasures. Indeed, he lived life indulging in everything under the sun. And yet, he grew very depressed (verse 11):

¹¹
Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labour in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun
.

My friend, if you only experience things under the sun, deep down, you’ll always be unfulfilled, you’ll always be empty on the inside.

When I was in National Service, I was assigned to the Singapore navy. I remember that over a period of a month, our ship sailed to a number of destinations. One day, we docked in Taiwan and we all took some R&R leave. That meant that we were supposed to go out and enjoy ourselves. I went along with my friends to a restaurant and we had a good time. When we finished our meal, my friends decided that they wanted to go “floor dancing”. Now, I was already a practising Christian and I remember thinking to myself, “How can the floor dance?”

I decided not to follow them and before they set off, I said to them, “Look, whatever you guys want to do, just go ahead, but I’m going back to the ship.” So I returned to the ship. The few sailors who were on duty back on the ship were cursing having to do duty that night. When they saw me return early from R&R, they thought that I was sick. Later, when they knew the reason for my coming back early, they made fun of me and said, “You Christian! The night is young! Why don’t you drink and be happy!” I went to my room, read some books and spent time with Jesus on my bunk.

Some of you might say, “Pastor Prince, you missed out on a good night!” Perhaps I did, but wait and see what happened next. The men all returned to the ship after their R&R. Then, on the journey back to Singapore, one by one my friends came to me and said, “I don’t know what happened that night, but can you help me? I think I might have caught a disease! When I urinate, it hurts! I might have Aids! It was my first time being unfaithful. I have a wife and kids back home. I don’t know why I did it.”

What a horrible thought! A possible death sentence for one moment of gratification! Strange, isn’t it? One moment, these men are shouting, “The night is young, drink and be merry!”The next moment, they are facing a possible lethal disease. Now, I ask you: Who was the merry one on that return trip to Singapore?

By the way, one of those men did contract a venereal disease, but after I prayed for him, the Lord healed him and he later gave his life to Jesus.

Living On ‘That Side Of The Night’

I’m a truly blessed man. From a young age, God taught me to live a life worth living. And it wasn’t just through His Word and counselling that I saw how sad it is to live for just one moment of gratification. He even gave me a dream to teach me this.

Some years ago, I had a dream and I woke up knowing that God had spoken to me in that dream. I knew that the dream was from God because when God gives you a dream, it has His fingerprints all over it. I do not know how, but in my dream, I ended up contracting Aids! I don’t even remember having sex. But for some reason, He gave me a dream in which I just knew that I had been unfaithful to my wife and I had committed a sin.

It was so real. I woke up remembering that I had sinned in that dream. In my dream, I actually lived my life day after day, aware of my sin and my disease. In my dream, I looked at my beautiful, loving wife and thought to myself, “How stupid can you be!” But I could not turn back the clock. The act had been committed. I looked at my daughter and thought to myself, “I may not live to see her grow up.” I looked at my church and said, “I have to resign.” All from just one moment of gratification!

I said to God, “I’m so sorry! If only I can turn back the clock!”Then, I woke up. That dream was so real that even when I woke up, I thought that I was still dreaming. I thought that my real life was a dream and that my dream was real life. When I realised that it was all a dream, I almost shouted, “It was a dream! Praise God, it was a dream! Thank you, Lord Jesus!”

Dead fish float downstream, but live fish can swim upstream!

Then, I asked, “Lord, why did you give me that dream?” And the Lord said to me, “I gave you the dream so that you’ll understand how people feel after they have sinned. There are many men who live on this side of the night and I wanted you to experience this side of the night in a dream so that you could see firsthand what people are going through.” After the dream, I felt grateful for living a life worth living, a life that’s “above the sun”.

We Are Meant To Live Lives ‘Above The Sun’

All of us are meant to live lives above the sun. For me, life is full, not empty. To me, life is not grasping for the wind. I don’t know about you, but I’m enjoying life! I enjoy my family, I enjoy my wife, I enjoy my daughter, I enjoy my job, I enjoy my church… I enjoy my life! Jesus said in John 10:10, “
I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
That is a life worth living!

Your heart may be beating normally, but that does not mean that you are alive. You may be healthy physically, but you may be dead spiritually, like a walking zombie! Dead fish float downstream, but live fish can swim upstream! God wants to give you life to swim upstream, not to flow with the current. You are meant to have life more abundantly. But when a man has forgotten God and his thoughts are only of things under the sun, and he does everything he wants to gratify his flesh, in the end, like Solomon, he’ll say, “All was vanity and grasping for the wind!” (Ecclesiastes 2:11) I tell you, a man who does not withhold from his eyes whatever his heart desires, in the end, he’ll say, “All was vanity and grasping for the wind!”

The devil will try to put fantasies in your mind. He’ll try saying to you, “You’re missing out on life if you don’t try everything under the sun.” A rich playboy in the United States woke up one morning beside the latest girl in his bed, looked in the mirror and admitted, “I’m a lonely man!”

We have all heard of people who were rich and famous, who were successful in their fields of endeavour, who were good-looking, and yet in the end, they despaired of life. Elizabeth Taylor was once quoted in a fashionable newspaper as saying, “God knows I have tried. I have tried fame, food, men, drugs and drink, but I have never found peace.” The article described how she looked at her sleeping mother so very near death and said sadly, “Maybe death is the only peace.”

Just six weeks before he died, Elvis Presley was asked by a reporter, “Elvis, when you started playing music, you said that you wanted three things in life. You wanted to be rich, you wanted to be famous and you wanted to be happy. Are you happy, Elvis?” Elvis replied, “No, I am as lonely as hell.”

For people like these, life held no more meaning. For them, life was empty. For them, life was not worth living.

chapter
2

Prosperity With A Purpose

chapter 2

Prosperity With A Purpose

The Love Of Money Can Easily Ensnare Us

A
life worth living is a life in which we prosper for a divine purpose. However, to many Christians, prosperity seems dangerous because it has the potential to take us away from our purpose. And there is good reason to be cautious because the love of money can so easily ensnare us.

Jesus told the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12:13–21:

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Then one from the crowd said to Him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”
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But He said to him, “Man, who made Me a judge or an arbitrator over you?”
¹⁵
And He said to them, “Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.”

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Then He spoke a parable to them, saying: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded plentifully.
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And he thought within himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no room to store my crops?’
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So he said, ‘I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods.
¹⁹
And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink, and be merry.”
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But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul will be required of you; then whose will those things be which you have provided?’

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“So is he who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

Beware of covetousness, Jesus says in verse 15. To covet is to yearn for and to crave something that is not yours. The world and its media fight for your attention to entice you to want more than you have, to buy things you don’t need, with money you don’t have, to impress people who don’t care!

An Abundance Of Material Things Will Not Determine Quality Of Life

Now, God is not against you having an abundance of things. That’s not what Jesus is saying here in this passage of scripture. He is against things having you, not you having things. In fact, Jesus says in Luke 12:30 that our heavenly Father knows that we have need of material things. Matthew 6:33 tells us: