Solomon’s story is one that is absolutely incredible and sad all at the same time. Join Heather this week as she shares what we can learn from Solomon’s life and the happiness that only comes from God.Contributor: Steve and Mary share ways they were looking for happiness before they gave their hearts to God. Food addictions, movies, and video games were just some of the addictions that they struggled with. Yet today they have a beautiful story to share of how the choices they made, to put God first, have radically altered their lives. Now Jesus Christ is number one instead of food or video games.

Solomon’s story is one that is absolutely incredible and sad all at the same time. Join Heather this week as she shares what we can learn from Solomon’s life and the happiness that only comes from God.Contributor: Steve and Mary share ways they were looking for happiness before they gave their hearts to God. Food addictions, movies, and video games were just some of the addictions that they struggled with. Yet today they have a beautiful story to share of how the choices they made, to put God first, have radically altered their lives. Now Jesus Christ is number one instead of food or video games.

Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.

Starting with Jesus

Reflect and Renew February 2023

Heather Bennett

From Wisdom to Foolishness

God Cares for Elijah

Mount Carmel

Elisha Accepts God’s Call


As I started learning that I was idolizing food, how do I learn to see God as, you know, my God? I no longer have that food addiction. I mean, those things try to creep in, but I don't just control it anymore. God is my God. The food is not.

All learn and grow together in our walk with Jesus. We will definitely be encouraged and challenged as we hear from the experiences of others. In life, we have lots of daily choices to make. Those choices are going to affect our lives, either for good or for bad. This week's Renewed Devotional opened with a fascinating story about Stephen Smith and how his pride, arrogance, and disregard of counsel caused him 28 years of trouble.

The story highlights how our choices can affect the rest of our lives. You can read the story about Stephen Smith at startingwithjesus.com forward slash renew. Our Bible story this week is focused on Solomon. It's all about the choices that he made and where his choices led him. When Solomon began ruling over Israel, God asked him in a dream what he wanted.

Of all the things that Solomon could have asked for, he asked for wisdom. What an amazing gift to choose. God not only gave him wisdom and an understanding heart, But the Bible tells us that God was so pleased that He also gave him riches and honor. Leaders from around the world heard of Solomon's wisdom and traveled to his palace just to witness it for themselves. What a beautiful way to show those leaders God's power and blessings on King Solomon and his people.

As time went by, Solomon started relying more and more on his own wisdom. Instead of the wisdom that came from God, he started to change. It didn't happen overnight, but slowly. The choices that he made little by little led him to become proud, selfish, and even cruel. His heart was turned away from God and the Bible tells us that Solomon even worshipped false gods.

So what caused such a big change in him? In 1 Kings 11, verse 1, it tells us that Solomon loved many foreign women. God had given specific commands, though, not to intermarry with people who didn't love him. Solomon did not heed that advice. Could it be that Solomon had an addiction to women?

Or maybe even the attention that those women gave him? Just like we struggle with addictions today, Solomon struggled with his own weaknesses. The Bible tells us that it was his wives who turned his heart away from God. God loved Solomon, just like he loves each of us. It wasn't until the very last warning from a prophet of God that Solomon actually realized the choices he was making were not in harmony with God.

We have a wonderful story of Solomon turning back to God before it was too late. But what a heartache it had already caused. The consequences of those actions would affect the rest of his life. Today we're going to hear from Steve and Mary and where they were looking for happiness before their relationship with God. Food addictions, movies, and video games were just some of the addictions that they struggled with.

Yet today, they have a beautiful story to share with us of how the choices they made to put God first has radically altered their lives. Now Jesus is their number 1 focus. Hi this is Steve and Mary. We weren't raised as close to God as we are now. We kind of were more so raised that God exists and you do whatever you want and ask for forgiveness and who cares if you're really sorry about it.

You're forgiven and you go to heaven. And so there wasn't a true relationship there. There wasn't a true Understanding and Love for God the way we have now we kind of specialized in entertainment or worldly things that take up our time and kind of became that that idol worship almost like what Solomon did I mean he was he was doing idolatry with different idols of different gods and just because of the different wives and he was focused on many women he was focused on a variety of other things that he should not have been putting his time into and Looking back at our relationship We had Thousands of movies we had you know tons of video game consoles we had You know we went out to movies we ate out a lot we had you know all these obsessions that were just kind of fleeting and kind of pointless. And I mean, yeah, they were fun in the moment, but there was really nothing of substance there. And such, even our relationship was kind of built on these lackluster entertainment pieces.

During that time, We liked movies, as he said, but we also liked to eat. And we did not eat healthy. And weight is something I had struggled with my whole entire life. When we got to the point of eating and eating and eating, I actually ended up getting to 330 pounds. I really, I couldn't do anything.

At 21 years old, I couldn't walk 1 mile to a waterfall. I couldn't barely walk into the grocery store without getting out of breath. You couldn't ride your bike. Yeah, I couldn't ride my bike. I couldn't do anything.

I decided that I just, I didn't care. I needed to lose the weight, right? Well, long, long story, but I ended up losing about 150 pounds. And the biggest issue was, and that was before we came to God, and the biggest issue was I didn't break that addiction to food at that time. Well, and that's kind of, you know, playing into the fact that it was these little baby steps of things, these little small choices that just kind of kept compacting themselves over the years, you know, from the sitting and eating or the snacking or the entertainment things that kind of caused us to sit there and just eat together.

Yeah, so even after I lost the weight before, again, this is before we came to God and before we gave up the movies and all of that, I just learned how to control the weight. I learned how to be able to binge on food and then purge on exercise. Before God, even though I had been doing those things, it wasn't healthy. Food was still my first love. And so as we came into the church and as I started learning that I was idolizing food, I started trying to transition that.

How do I learn to see God as, you know, my God, not food as my God or as my idol. So it took me a few years, but I no longer have that food addiction. Sometimes it tries to creep back in. I mean, those things try to creep in, but I don't just control it anymore. God is my God.

The food is not. So often we have pressures of society, right? Like always telling us how we should act, how we should be, how we should act, how, you know, social media. And when we came into the church and as we started to actually study God's Word, which, you know, again, had Solomon looked back at the scripture, looked at, you know, things that Moses had written and things that David had written, it would have impacted him differently than kind of just going with the flow of things. I mean, we purged all of those movies and video game consoles and everything because it was a distraction.

It was such a distraction that if I would have kept going on the video game train, I probably wouldn't be married right now. We would be divorced. We were heading down that road because of him staying up until 3 a.m. You know playing video games and 1 thing that I had really put in front of me is thou shalt not put evil before your eyes. My favorite type of movies were horror movies.

I loved horror. The more gruesome, the better. I stopped watching the horror movies cold turkey. I couldn't do it anymore. And it's funny how there's no way I can even think about watching 1 of those now, because God has, because I was willing to give it over to God, He's also changed my heart.

I've become resensitized to the world. And it just reminds me of Galatians 6, 9, where it says, let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time, we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." And I mean, we have reaped the harvests of those things, because at that time, getting rid of the game systems, getting rid of the food, getting rid of the movies. All of that was hard. But now we get to, we live right by the Rocky, right in the Rocky Mountains. And so now we get to hike some of the highest mountains in the country and we get to see such beauty and we get to bring our boys up in that because we've changed and we've decided to allow God to lead us.

And so like Solomon, he recognized his poor choices and almost too late, like we recognized our poor choices after studying more of God's word And so we were able to actually grow a relationship between 1 another. You know, instead of just being entertainment in between us, it was us. And then we were able to spend time in the mountains. We're able to spend time together, you know, even if it's just sitting and having a conversation or building something. And 1 thing that I'm able to do now, because over the past about year and a half, I really loved myself the first time in my life.

When Steve compliments me and says I'm beautiful or something, I say thank you. And that may sound silly, but that was really hard for me because I always found an excuse of why I wasn't beautiful. But now our marriage is so well because I'm willing for him to love me because I also love myself the way God loves me and sees me. We're just happy that we were willing to give over those things so that we can now have that life with Christ. When Steve and Mary made Jesus the center of their lives.

That's when everything changed. Only when they surrendered to God that empty distractions were they filled with peace and fulfillment. They had to choose this though for themselves and God did the rest. What choices are we making today? When our kids are taking a nap and we have a few minutes to ourselves, what are we doing with that time?

When we're frustrated about a situation or a spouse, What choice do we make in our thoughts, our words, and our actions? When the bills are piling up and we don't know what to do, what is our choice? Do we choose to have trust? Do we rely on our Heavenly Father? Do we commit the problem to God?

Or do we choose to worry and fret about it? I absolutely love the challenge this week. It's taken directly from our Renew devotional. Have you ever played with dominoes? If you have some dominoes, use them for an illustration for family worship.

First, you're going to talk about Solomon's life. And for each good thing that he did, you're going to stack 1 domino on top of another while they lay on the table. The table is going to represent the Word of God and for each poor choice you're going to stand a domino vertically on its end in a line so that the dominoes stand no more than an inch between them. Once this is completed you can then ask which is the most stable? The 1 stacked flat on the table or the 1 standing up?

Then give the table a little bit of a shake and see what happens. Do they stay together or fall down? Now stand the dominoes up in a line again. Give the first 1 a gentle push and see how each 1 knocks the other down. How does this illustrate our choices?

Each choice can affect another and another and another until we find things crashing to the ground. Which is the better way to live? With our life grounded on the Bible or wobbly and unsupported? Talk together as a family and think about the choices that we make every single day. I sure hope you've been enjoying this time together as much as I have.

Each Sunday the Renew devotional is released, so you have time before listening to this podcast to read the lesson and dig deeper into the scripture. You can find that lesson at startingwithjesus.com forward slash renew or if you would like to email us at renew at starting with jesus dot com and ask to have it sent each week straight to your inbox. Before we go, let's bow our heads for prayer. Dear Heavenly Father, you know each and every 1 of our hearts. You know the choices that we're going to make before we even make them.

Help our choices not to fall like those dominoes that were lined up. Open our eyes so that we can see our poor choices before it's too late. We want to stay close to you and not drift away from you, so we ask that you would impress us to make your letter, the Bible, a priority in our lives so that we can choose wise choices. Teach us to rely on you because you know what's best in each 1 of our lives. And let us turn to you when we're having a hard time.

We're so thankful for your love and that you forgive us when we fall. Amen. This podcast is sponsored by Starting With Jesus. To find out more about other programs or to find out the links that were shared in this podcast, just check out the description box below.

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Series

Reflect and Renew February 2023

From Wisdom to Foolishness

Description

Parent Series

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Recorded

Other Teachings in Series

From Wisdom to Foolishness

15m

God Cares for Elijah

15m

Mount Carmel

18m

Elisha Accepts God’s Call

16m

Sound Doctrine