Prayer: Father, like Solomon, I have experienced Your voice in a dream. Unlike Solomon, may I be obedient to Your law and faithful to Your word. May I embrace Your promise and heed Your warning. In the name of Yeshua, amen.
Reading: 1 Kings 9 key: vs. 1-9 “Now it came to pass, when Solomon had finished building the House of Adonai, the royal palace and all that Solomon was pleased to do, that Adonai appeared to Solomon a second time, just as He had appeared to him at Gibeon. Adonai said to him: “I have heard your prayer and your petition that you made before Me. I have consecrated this House, which you have built, to put My Name there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there every day. “As for you, if you will walk before Me as your father David walked—in integrity of heart and uprightness, doing all I commanded you, keeping My statutes and My ordinances— then I will establish the throne of your kingship over Israel forever, as I promised your father David saying: ‘You shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’ “But if you or your sons will indeed turn away from following Me—not keeping My mitzvot and My statutes that I set before you—and go and serve other gods and worship them, then will I cut off Israel from the land which I have given them, and this House which I have consecrated for My Name, I will cast out of My sight. So Israel will become a proverb and a byword among all peoples. This House, now so exalted—everyone passing by it will gasp in shock and hiss, saying: ‘Why has Adonai done thus to this land and to this House?’ They will be told: ‘Because they forsook Adonai their God who brought their fathers out of the land of Egypt, and embraced other gods, worshipped them and served them, therefore Adonai has brought all this evil on them.’”
Attention: I had a dream in 2005 which I had interpreted. It was interpreted that Adonai was telling me that He was going to tear down the religious structures in my life. I believe that God has done exactly what was interpreted to me. I have been on the alert, watching to see how God was going to achieve the demolition of religiosity in my life. I believe He is still doing His work in me. His transformative work has led to discoveries in His Word, which have led to writing and publishing which I never imagined. It has led to conversations with other like-minded people of faith, in pursuit of God.
When God makes a promise, He keeps it. A promise through a covenant is eternal in nature, extending from generation to generation. In a dream the night all the Temple celebration ended; God reminds Solomon that He made a covenant promise to his father David. God would keep His promise, but it was conditioned upon Solomon and his sons being obedient, “But if you or your sons will indeed turn away from following Me,” … “I will cut off Israel from the land which I have given them, and this House which I have consecrated for My Name, I will cast out of my sight.” Sometimes this passage is translated, “tear it down.”
Obedience is serious business with God. It seems that no sooner had the words of dedication been uttered from Solomons lips that he began to compromise. However, it was a slow, gradual erosion of his turn from Adonai. Over a twenty-year period, Solomon had built his palace and God’s Temple. During that time, he married many foreign wives in opposition to God’s Word and the man whom God spoke with, who wrote many songs and Proverbs, succumbed to the pull of the world and left Adonai.
I hope we can learn from Solomon’s life how not to do life with God. The consequences are devastating and deadly. Our sons’ and our daughters’ lives depend on us. May we be the generation which turns it around and becomes wholly obedient to Adonai.
Action: I choose obedience to Adonai and His Word and law, over sacrifice for sin.
Yield: I choose to yield my life in obedience to Adonai.
Engage: I choose to engage with the Holy Spirit in a life of obedience.
Relationship: I choose to live in holy, intimate relationship with God.
Prayer: Father, my desire is to please You in everything I do. Your Word shares the details of people’s failures in hopes that I will learn from their mistakes and not repeat them. I ask that the Holy Spirit empower me with holy zeal, to seek that which is above and not on the earth. Amen.
Memory Verse: Hebrews 11:6 “Now without faith it is impossible to please God. For the one who comes to God must believe that He exists and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.”
Music Video: Micah Stampley—Take My Life https://youtu.be/G5ZrO_IIDwo?si=f6ObiCiDpj4j3Cyo
Remember, “Abide in Yeshua, today!’