Ecclesiastes 5:1-7
The Message
God’s in Charge, Not You
5 Watch your step when you enter God’s house.
Enter to learn. That’s far better than mindlessly offering
a sacrifice,
Doing more harm than good.
2 Don’t shoot off your mouth, or speak before you think.
Don’t be too quick to tell God what you think he wants to hear.
God’s in charge, not you—the less you speak, the better.
3 Overwork makes for restless sleep.
Overtalk shows you up as a fool.
4-5 When you tell God you’ll do something, do it—now.
God takes no pleasure in foolish drivel. Vow it, then do it.
Far better not to vow in the first place than to vow and not pay up.
6 Don’t let your mouth make a total sinner of you.
When called to account, you won’t get by with
“Sorry, I didn’t mean it.”
Why risk provoking God to angry retaliation?
7 But against all illusion and fantasy and empty talk
There’s always this rock foundation: Fear God!
Romans 12:1-2
The Message
Place Your Life Before God
12 1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
Read full chapterCopyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson
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