I can tell you, I am falling in love with the Bible all over again this year as I’m reading through the Word of God. The one thing that I love in particular is the instruction that I get from the Word of God.

 

“To know wisdom and instruction,” writes Solomon, “To discern the sayings of understanding, to receive instruction in wise behavior, righteousness, justice, equity; to give prudence to the naïve, to the youth knowledge and discretion, a wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel, to understand a proverb and a figure, the words of the wise and their riddles. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge; Fools hate wisdom and instruction” (Prov. 1:1-7, NASB).

 

If you are not in the Word of God, you are just flat missing it!

 

Right now, I’m reading through Ecclesiastes. It talks about the utter futility and folly of hoarding riches. Solomon says,

 

There is a grievous evil which I have seen under the sun: riches being hoarded by their owner to his hurt.

 

When those riches were lost through a bad investment and he had fathered a son, then there was nothing to support him.

 

As he had come naked from his mother’s womb, so will he return as he came He will take nothing from the fruit of his labor that he can carry in his hand.

 

This also is a grievous evil—exactly as a man is born, thus will he die. So what is the advantage to him who toils for the wind?

 

Throughout his life he also eats in darkness with great vexation, sickness and anger.

 

Here is what I have seen to be good and fitting: to eat, to drink and enjoy oneself in all one’s labor in which he toils under the sun during the few years of his life which God has given him; for this is his reward.

 

Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God.

 

For he will not often consider the years of his life, because God keeps him occupied with the gladness of his heart (Prov. 5:13-20).

 

What’s the point? You came naked into the world, and you’re going to leave naked. So don’t hoard your wealth. Use your wealth! Because the only joy in wealth comes not in the accumulation of it, but through the process itself of rightly using one’s wealth, the joy of exercising the very gift that God has inculcated into you—given to you. So enjoy the process! Because if you’re a believer, God gives your life the meaning, the purpose and the fulfillment that your life was intended to have.