Anyone who gives their whole heart and time to the "love of pleasure" is on the high road to spiritual and sometimes financial poverty.

"Word Pictures" for Our Imagination

Free Printable Devotional Sheets Sunday, July 20th

Today's Daily Verse is found in Proverbs 21.17

"Those who love pleasure become poor; those who love wine and luxury will never be rich."        - NLT version

The Dangers of the Last days...

As it was in the days of Noah... Matthew 24.37

2 Timothy 3.1-5 NLT version

"You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times.

2 For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred.

3 They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good.

4 They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.

5 They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly. Stay away from people like that!"

You’re addicted to thrills? Willing to trample on GOD's Law to live a life of just seeking pleasures?

• What an empty life!
  
• The pursuit of pleasure, for and of itself, is never satisfied.
• Are we to have no pleasure?
• Absolutely we are to enjoy pleasures as they unfold in our lives!
• Pleasure is the very character of the ways of GOD

Proverbs 3.17 Speaking of wisdom, GOD says, "Her ways are highways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace."

• GOD gives us all things to enjoy, BUT the only way to enjoy "pleasures" is to not love pleasures, or be driven or addicted to them...
• Getting it right is critical...

Not this...

Titus 3.3 "For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another."

OK! Show me someone in the Bible where "pleasures" turned into poverty...

I didn't think you would ask.

Look at the parable of the Prodigal Son.

Luke 15.13-16 "A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. 14 About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. 15 He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. 16 The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything."

What "pleasures" do we love more than GOD?

• spending all you earn
• eating
• watching television
• sports
• gambling

Anything that we "love" to be involved with that cuts GOD out of the schedule...

There is a right kind of pleasures...

Psalms 16.11

"Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."

This is more like it!

Remember, it is the "love" of pleasures, just like the "love of money" that is the issue we need to address. GOD is not against us having fun - just make sure He is first in our lives - then go for it!

See you tomorrow...

In the meantime:

Have you called or emailed someone to invite them to join us in our daily study in Proverbs...it would be great if you did that today! Thanks.