Good morning…

“OK REALLY??” she wrote after reading my blog post yesterday. “I am not kidding – this is the devotional I read first today (as I was awaiting yours) and then… I get the cherry on top, the COULD HAVE HAD A V8! I just love it. God is so good. To give me a double dose of how He wants us to live.”

She read first Dr. Michael Youseff’s Leading the Way devotional from yesterday, in which he was inspired to use the same exact scripture reference as the one God had drawn me to that morning, amplifying the very same topic. Youseff wrote: “Life is a celebration; delight in it. (See Ecclesiastes 11:7–12:8.) For us to enjoy life and to see it as a celebration, there are three things that we must do: rejoice (11:7–9), remove (11:10–11), and remember (12:1–8). Rejoice in each day. Anticipate every new day as a wrapped gift from the hand of God, and look forward to waking up and unwrapping that wonderful gift. Start your day with gratitude. Remove bitterness, false beliefs, bad habits, and unwholesome relationships from your life now before they endanger your future. Remember the constant presence of God. Wherever you go, He is with you, and He is watching over you. Remember to obey His Word and to seek His righteousness and His Kingdom first — for that is the secret to your success. Remember to place Him first in every decision you make.”

Yesterday’s “Gulp down God’s V-8” message focused on Michael’s first point: rejoice.

He is wise to point out the second part of enjoying life wholeheartedly: remove. Ecclesiastes 11:10 (AMP) tells us, “Therefore, remove sorrow and anger from your heart and put away pain from your body, for childhood and the prime of life are fleeting.” If eating bread with gusto leads to greed, overeating, or health issues, then sorrow and anger may fill our heart and pain may rack our body. Through prayerful self-awareness and dependence upon the Holy Spirit’s promised fruit of self control, we can remove bread from our diet. If drinking wine with a robust heart leads to overindulgence, drunkenness, and addiction, then sorrow, anger, and pain will multiply in and around us. Through prayerful self-reflection and reliance upon the power of God’s Spirit, we can remove our detrimental habit of drinking. The stumbling blocks that prevents us from enjoying life fully, God can reveal and empower us to remove.

Michael’s third point is also an important part of the wholehearted living: remember. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”— (12:1, NIV). Earnestly remember your Creator before the silver cord [of life] is broken…then the dust [out of which God made man’s body] will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it, (12:6-7, AMP). When sorrow, anger, and pain detract from the joy God intends, we need to remember that we are not alone. God is with us, in us and around us. With God’s guidance each day, we are empowered to rejoice, to remove, and to remember. “All [that is done without God’s guidance] is vanity (futility),” (12:8b, AMP).

Jesus reminds us: The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance [to the full, till it overflows] (John 10:10, AMP).

…Sue…