Christian Devotional – January 19, 2017

Yesterday we saw that Solomon had become king and he had a conversation with God where he received wisdom to govern the people. The next few chapters in 1 Kings (4-8), we see Solomon displaying this great wisdom and even going about accomplishing the amazing purpose that God had for him. Solomon built the Temple for the Lord, which was the culmination of his father David’s dream. Then we get to 1 King chapter 9. Read verses 1-9.

God reiterates his promise and reminder to Solomon. Why would He choose that very time to do that? Solomon was at the height of obedience. He’d been faithful to do what God had given him. That was the time when God chose to remind him of the need to continue to be obedient and to continue to follow God. All the things that we’ve been talking about in the previous days regarding purpose, Solomon had been doing up to that point.

It’s amazing how strong temptation can be right at the moment that we experience God in an amazing way. The temptation to become prideful and think we did it on our own comes. The temptation to stop doing anything more and think that we’ve “arrived” comes. The temptation to be jealous and desire the praise for the work for ourselves and not God will come. All these temptations (and more) come and we are the most vulnerable to them at that moment. That was why God came to Solomon in that moment to remind Him and encourage him to continue to be faithful.

Unfortunately, we’ll see tomorrow that Solomon didn’t heed God’s warning and didn’t follow through. The question remains, as we look back through 1 Kings 9:1-9, how will we answer those questions?