July 10.
What Stuff Controls Your Life?

Luke 12:18

And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods.

What shall I do? When you talk to yourself, be careful how you answer yourself. This man used too many Is and my’s. Here is the way he would have recited Psalm 23: “I am my shepherd; I shall not want; I make in me to lie down in green pastures; I lead me beside still water; I restore my soul; I lead me in the path of my righteousness for my name’s sake; yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death; I will fear no evil because I’m with me. With my rod and my staff, I comfort me. I prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; I anoint my head with oil; my cup runneth over; surely me, myself and I shall follow me all the days of my life and I shall dwell in my house forever. He was selfish and self-centered. The man counted on everything, but God. He said, “It’s my barn, my grounds, my soul. Ha! He forgot to read Psalm 24 The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.

Here is a rich man who had it all. But he forgot that the ground really belongs to God. Even though it produced fruit, it was God’s sunshine and God’s rain, God’s trees that made the lumber. He planned for his soul to take it easy. But there’s nothing in the text to indicate that his soul can be at ease, because souls don’t feast on corn. I know up north, you go to “Soul Food Restaurants”. They’ve got ham hocks and collard greens, and turnip greens and fatback. They’ve got black-eyed peas, candied yams, crackling bread, blackberry cobbler, and peach cobbler. The sign says, “Soul Food.” But how many of you know your soul can’t eat that? Your soul will have to feast on the word of God. When you allow all the stuff to take control of your life, you’re in serious trouble.