Proverbs 3 - Invest In What Matters

Hello, and welcome back to Strength for the Day.

Hope you're having a great morning so far, and I have enjoyed my morning. I've been outside just a little bit, and beautiful day, and looking forward to getting some stuff done today. If I remember correctly, I believe today is Mrs.

Hannah Fountain's birthday. So if you want to drop a happy birthday to her, write down here in the comments, believe today is her birthday. If it's not, Pastor will be like, no, that's later this week.

He mentioned several days. Sunday was Mother's Day. I believe today's Mrs.

Hannah's birthday. And then in just a couple of days is Pastor and Mrs. Hannah's anniversary.

And just very thankful for them. And they're getting to spend a little bit of time with family this morning. So if you want to, I don't know, drop a message for or something for them down in the comments, you can do so.

Hello, Michael. I believe several others that are already watching as well. Great to be with you.

We're going to continue in Proverbs chapter three, really here in just a second.

And as Pastor and Micah and Denet or yes, Pastor Micah and Dennis just were with us a couple days ago and going over the first part of this chapter and great to have them on the live on the podcast.

And so today is going to be a little bit shorter of a thing, shorter of a time.

And really we're going through verses, really nine through pretty much 20, nine through 20 are the verses that we're going through that are all kind of along this one general theme of invest in what matters.

Many of us would know that investments, the stock market, all of these things are incredibly volatile at times.

There are things that you can do that are kind of more novelty that you think, man, I really expect this company, this product to really pop up, to really do well.

And but as we all know, it's important to invest in what matters, to put time into what matters, to put our mental energies into what matters.

And today we're going to be learning some of that from God's word, starting in verse number nine of Proverbs 3.

It says this, honor the Lord with thy substance and with the first fruits of all thine increase, so shall thy barns be filled with plenty and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.

And we'd know from the Old Testament time that what's being talked about here with the first fruits and honoring the Lord with our substance would be people giving according as God had blessed them.

And the tithe that's being talked about here was something that went to maintain the temple. And this would have just been built during Solomon's time.

Before that, the tabernacle, but it also fed and clothed the Levites and the priests and those that were interacting with God's law. And this was something that was great for this time to be able to be a particular blessing.

Sometimes when we give, we think, oh man, you know, I'm given to a church or I'm giving to whatever thing. And what does this really go towards? Well, during this time, it was literally to keep families fed and helping them.

Obviously, nowadays, we have many things that we're able to do, even with this building and keeping lights on and helping our church move forward. I think of even our 1 of 500 campaign that we're doing right now to build over on our new property.

And some things that maybe aren't specifically outlined in Scripture, you won't see anything about a building campaign as such in Scripture.

But there's just a principle here of, as we give to the Lord, God's not going to say, oh, that's really great. Now, I'm not going to help you out in life, or now I'm not going to bless your finances or your life at all.

There is a promise that as we put our trust in the Lord with our finances, that God will take care of us and that God sees it.

And we have this promise here in verse 10, so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine. Now, if you don't have a barn, God will still bless you. That's just the thing that's mentioned here in the verse.

But then Solomon goes along this line. He says, my son despise not the chastening of the Lord, neither be weary of his correction. For whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth even as a father, the son in whom he delighted.

Now, those seem like kind of contrary thoughts. The one is, hey, make sure that you're honoring the Lord with your tithe and with your offerings. And then the next one says, hey, don't despise, don't hate the Lord when he corrects you.

Which seems like an odd interpolation until you see this next section here of 13 through verse number 20, where it talks all about wisdom. It says, happy is the man that findeth wisdom.

The merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, the gain thereof than fine gold. She, wisdom, is more precious than rubies. And all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.

Length of days is in her right hand, and in her left hand, riches and honor, her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She's the tree of life to them that lay hold on her. And happy is everyone that retaineth her.

The Lord by wisdom has founded the earth by understanding as he established the heavens. By his knowledge, the depths are broken up, and the clouds drop down the dew.

It goes, okay, here we have kind of maybe three thoughts that we don't know how they work together. Okay, honor the Lord with our first fruits, don't despise the correction of the Lord, and then all of these things about wisdom.

And really, it all goes together. It says, hey, you should invest in what matters.

And what matters is our relationship with the Lord, spending time with him, making sure that we're putting a financial priority on the things that he puts a financial priority.

We can buy and sell and do all of these things with any number of products, of stocks, as we talked a little bit about at the beginning. All of these things, we can put our mental energy, we can put our time into, we can put our finances into.

But in all of it, the goal is, hey, focus on what your relationship with God would have, focus on what he has for your life.

So whether that's in finances, at the beginning part of this, whether it's even in God's correction of, many times God's correction comes through, hey, I'm going to take away maybe some business during this time, or maybe I'm going to put a little

bit of financial duress, maybe a medical emergency or something along these lines. Focusing back on God when he's correcting us and saying, hey, you're headed off some different direction, I want to bring you back to where you need to be.

And then you have there at the very end of focusing on wisdom, on focusing on God's ways more than all of these things that are mentioned.

Silver, fine gold, rubies, because all of the benefits that come, length of days or a long life, riches and honor, pleasantness, ways of pleasantness, paths of peace, a tree of life, happiness to everyone that retains wisdom.

In all of these things, there's this one simple thought. Follow God, seek after God, don't seek other things.

And maybe in your life, there's been times when you've gone after other things that aren't God or maybe aren't necessarily wrong in any way, but it was distracting you from God. I can think of my life.

I'm the music pastor here, obviously, but in my life, there have been times where I wanted to focus more on music and the joy of melodies and harmonies and rhythms and all of that, focusing on music itself rather than focusing on God.

And there were times that God kind of course corrected me and said, hey, no, don't focus on the music, focus on me. Don't focus on maybe some of these other things, focus on souls.

And I believe the point of this passage is, hey, you can either focus and spend all of your time, energy, mental acuity and finances on all of these other things in life, or you can choose, I'm gonna focus on the Lord and pursue his path and his plan

for my life. Hope that would be just a short encouragement for you today, and that you'd be encouraged by that. I know for my life, I've always got to take inventory of, okay, what am I spending my money on? What am I spending my time on?

What am I spending my mental energy on? And this is just a great passage to remind us, hey, focus on the Lord. All of these benefits come as a result of following and knowing him.

Well, great to see some of you on here. Krista, Jim, Michael, and others that maybe will watch later. Danny, if you get to this point in the video, drop a comment below, just say hi.

And great to be with you all, and look forward to being back with Pastor tomorrow, finishing out Proverbs chapter 3.