Christian Devotional – January 24, 2017

We have been looking at purpose during this month of January and in the past several days, we are focusing in on Solomon. Today we are going to finish up Solomon. Read 1 Kings 11:14-43.

Solomon had turned away from God. He had gotten distracted by his foreign wives and he had been willing to put their wants and desires ahead of God’s wants and desires. He obeyed them more than he obeyed God. God saw this and God responded by raising up adversaries against Solomon. He tried to get Solomon to turn back to God, but instead, Solomon decided that he was going to just focus on his anger. It even came to the place where God prophesied that Solomon’s son would not retain the entire kingdom, but that it would be split into two parts. Solomon became so angry that he tried to kill the man that would take the kingdom from him.

The question becomes, how do we go from the man that God is speaking with on a regular basis to the one what God is tearing things away from. The answer is that it happens slowly, one decision at a time. As we allow and tolerate sin in our lives, we slowly begin moving away from all that God has for us until we get to the place where we don’t even recognize what God is doing or why. We must stay focused on Him and Him alone or not only will we miss God’s purpose in our life, we’ll miss God Himself.