Your Labor is Folly

Ecclesiastes 2:18–26: Labor Under the Sun

In today's text is Ecclesiastes chapter 2, verses 18 through 26. Thus I hated all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun, for I must leave it to the man who will come after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool, yet he will have control over all the fruit of my labor for which I have labored by acting wisely under the sun.

This too is vanity. Therefore, I completely despaired of all the fruit of my labor for which I had labored under the sun. When there is a man who has labored with wisdom, knowledge, and skill, then he gives his legacy to one who has not labored with them.

This too is vanity and a great evil. For what does a man get in all his labor and in his striving with which he labors under the sun? Because all his days his task is painful and grievous. Even at night his mind does not rest.

This too is vanity. There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and tell himself that his labor is good. This also I have seen that it is from the hand of God. For who can eat and who can have enjoyment without him?

For to a person who is good in his sight he is given wisdom and knowledge and joy, while to the sinner he is given the task of gathering and collecting so that he may give to one who is good in God's sight.

This too is vanity in striving after wind. Let us pray. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

You turn man back into dust and say, return, O children of men, for a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it passes by. You have swept them away like a flood. They fall asleep. In the morning they are like grass.

In the morning it flourishes and sprouts anew. Toward evening it fades and withers away. For we have been consumed by your anger and by your wrath. We have been dismayed. You have placed our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence.

For all our days have declined in your fury. We have finished our years like a sigh. As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years, or if due to strength, eighty years. Yet our pride is but labor and sorrow, for soon it is gone and we fly away.

Who understands the power of your anger and your fury according to the fear that is due you? So teach us, Lord, to number our days that we may present to you a heart of wisdom. Do you return, O Lord? How long will it be?

O satisfy us in the morning with your loving kindness that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. Make us glad according to the days you have afflicted us and the years we have seen evil. Let your work appear to us, Lord, in your majesty to our children.

Let the favor of the Lord, our God, be upon us and confirm for us the work of our hands. Lord, yes, confirm the work of our hands. Bless the preaching of your word.

Amen. We know that we have little time and it doesn't bother us. We go about our grind. We work every day. We try to store up riches so that we can buy a little bit of comfort or a little bit of relaxation knowing that we will die.

We raise our children hoping that they will repent and they will grow in the admonition of our Lord, yet we don't know until we die. And it is all vanity. It's also vanity to think that we see our life with clarity.

It's vanity to think that we understand all of the influences that shape the way we think about the world. That's going to be confronted this morning because there are several atmospheric influences on our thinking as 2026 Americans.

There's all kinds of competing identities that were not around hundreds of years ago. Those men struggled through different kinds of cultural and societal ideas. And oftentimes, the one who is the deepest entrapped to them doesn't even know that he's ensnared.

The Boomer Mentality and the Futility of Legacy

So we have a couple of ditches. There's been a dominant view through my whole life, and then there has been a reactionary view that deals with labor. I'm not going to be insulting, but I'm going to call it what it is.

There is the boomer mentality. The boomer mentality is that we work to store up wealth so that we can go on cruises and spend it all so that our kids won't be spoiled. Because if I give them all of this money, then they won't learn how to work for it themselves.

And when they can't get it done, they just need to pull up their bootstraps much harder. Because I got it done, why can't this little punk get it done? That's one of the views. And in the church, not to get too acid here, watch me, Tyler, all right?

This is trouble. Much of this mentality in the church comes from the idea that we're going to be beamed out of here, right? Because if all you're trying to do is to get to the point when Jesus is just going to whisk you out of the world, then what is the point of future generations?

Now look, I don't think that every person who believes in a rapture is consciously thinking that way. But again, there are influences on your life that you don't even know about. And when you have certain beliefs about the way things are going to turn out, it's going to change the way you view the world.

Solomon wanted to keep a kingdom. Solomon wanted his kingdom and his name to go on forever. And Solomon is looking at his own son, his own boy, and I imagine that he is growing increasingly frustrated.

And as he looks at his son and he thinks, I have this kingdom. What's going to happen with this boy? He's probably going to lose it. It's all vanity. In the midst of this kind of self-defeating civilization destroying vanity of the quote boomer unquote class, there was a reaction.

There was a reaction that hit very hard in the 80s as novel as dispensational thought is. And it is novel. That's not throwing darts. It never existed before the 1800s. There was also a reaction that never existed before the mid 1900s, which was called theonomic Christian reconstructionism.

And this idea is this. We have to build it all back, brothers. Everything is about investing in the future. We got to work hard. We got to work really hard so that we can invest it in future generations, take back the arts, take back the government, take back Hollywood, take back the schools for the glory of God.

And boy, does it sound good. We will make it materially better for all of our posterity. But then Solomon comes in and he says, who knows what they're going to do with it? Vanity. So what do we do? We have self-defeating, civilizational destroying vanity of the boomers.

And we have the vanity of thinking that we are going to be able to make our children more godly than we are. Vanity. And then guess what? For good measure, you're all going to die. Fifty years from now, you'll be very lucky if anyone remembers your name, right?

You will have accomplished very little. No one will remember it. You might be a curiosity for somebody who does a DNA test 150 years ago. But guess what? I haven't done anything in my life that will even make them curious.

A breath on the wind. And yet, we're so concerned with what's going on every day. See, what Solomon says is that the pietistic, all that matters is your prayer ditch, and the I'm going to work everything and give it to my son, and it's going to be better for him.

And then every single thing in between that is vanity, striving after the wind. So what do we do? Right? That's the question. And what this gets at is one of those questions, what is the point? Does it even matter what you do?

And if it does matter, we all feel this, right? It has to matter. It has to matter. But then we often don't think, why does it matter? So let's give it this way. The Bible does not contradict itself. God's word is not like Lucy holding the football for us and then trying to rip it away at the last second so we fall down.

It's not giving us self-defeating proverbs. It is not trying to confuse us. The word of God is clear. It is piercing. It is trying to make us righteous. And when we understand it correctly, it will make us righteous.

More on that at the end. But in the midst of this, we have to understand, why does it mean anything? I think that's the question that Solomon addresses here. And the reason how I know this is you have to look what he's doing in a literary scale.

Many times does he talk about what he's observing in this text. We have two blocks of text, verses 18 to 23, and then verses 24 to 26. The lens shifts tremendously. 18 through 23 is all dread. It's all ruin because it's all under the sun.

And what is drawn into sharp focus is how finite and insignificant you really are. And in one sense, Christian, is this not true? In one sense, we are extremely insignificant. Think about who God is. Think about what he's done.

Even more than that, think about how he did it. Did you know everything that you see, everything, came into existence with all of its marvelous macro, all the gravity of the stars, and the way the planets revolve, and the way the galaxies expand, down to the micro of how every individual cell works with all of its construction and organization.

All of that happened from this God who thought about it. He didn't work with his hands to fashion it. He thought about it, and then he said for it to be. That's the God we worship. And in light of that, we are extraordinarily insignificant.

Wouldn't you agree? What's our 80 years if we're real strong? Does it matter? But then in the other sense, we know that God, he stooped down, and he took the dust, and he formed a man, and God breathed into the man's nostril.

And that became a different kind of life. See, the whole significance of the human existence is only significance because God says it is. So what you do, if you do it under the sun, it doesn't matter.

It's all working for God's ends. So look at what Solomon says as we look at verse 18. It says that he hated all of the fruit of his labor. He hated it all. Everything that Solomon accomplished, he looked at it, and he hated it.

Isn't that strong? See, that makes me feel even worse because if I look at all of the work that I've done in my life, that might take 10 minutes. Solomon had accomplished so much. Just his house, the temple of God, the lasting peace in the...

Get this, guys, peace in the Middle East. Peace in the Middle East. Solomon did it. Solomon had all the wealth. We don't even know his judgments were so wise that I think they're not written down. We can't even understand them.

All of the nations flocked and paid Solomon tribute so that they could watch the way he dispensed justice because his kingdom was so high and so lofty and so beautiful. And Solomon looked at all of that and he said, I hate this.

I hate it. How can that be? How can that be? Solomon, the wisest man, wealthy, tremendous, tremendous man of stature, and he looks at everything he accomplished and he says, vanity. And then he gives us reasons.

The Three Ditches: Pietism, Laziness, and Workaholism

Why does he hate it? He explains his logic. And this is all the elements of vanity. Here's reason number one why Solomon hates his work. He will have to leave the fruit of his labor to a man regardless of whether that man is wise or foolish.

It doesn't matter. And Solomon can't control whether his son is wise or foolish. Just as much, can you control the salvation of your children? Can you change their heart? Can you make them a new creature?

No. And if you think you can, it's vanity. So do nothing, right? No. More on that later. But what Solomon did is he saw that he acted wisely and he attained tremendous fruit under the sun. All of the work of his hands prospered because God had blessed him.

Remember his original request. Lord, would you give me wisdom so that I can rightly judge your glorious people. Solomon's eyes were the eyes of God. Solomon's wisdom was that he valued what God valued.

And he looks at everything he does and he says, I hate it. I hate it because it's going to be left to someone who's wise or foolish and I have no control over that. Whether my descendants are wise or not, they will control everything that I worked for.

It will not be mine and it will be theirs based on blood and it doesn't matter if they are smart or if they are stupid or if they are righteous or if they are wicked. They will still have it. Did you know that?

All of your name, all of the work of your hands and all the legacy, as small or as great as that might be, is going to be carried on by people who knows. It's just because of blood. It's just your descendants.

The next thing that Solomon sees is that he would give his vast riches to someone who did not work for them. He's going to give it to his son and his son did nothing to earn it. Nothing at all. His legacy passes on to a son and not only is this legacy that's being passed on, not only is it vanity, but Solomon says it's a great evil.

And this is what clues me into thinking, I think Solomon knew what was about to happen. I think Solomon knew his son and I think Solomon knew that I have built this kingdom and all of this legacy and it's going to pass to this son and it's a great evil.

Your days are painful. Solomon had the busy head at night. He couldn't sleep with the softest mattresses that the kingdom could provide and all the people fanning him off. He had all kinds of comfort everywhere.

His concubines were legendary. All the comfort that a man could have in that time and he can't sleep at night because he's thinking and worrying and just imbibing all of the stress that comes with all of the fruit of his labor that he had.

He is thinking about his kingdom and he is worrying about it. It's like he'd just been playing Tetris for three hours before bed and he is trying to make the blocks fit and it's not going to stop. You can't count the sheep.

The blocks are going to keep falling. And so it is with Solomon that he's thinking about his rulings. He's thinking about his buildings. He's thinking about the peace treaties that he has with other nations.

He's thinking about the horses and the cavalry he has and then he's thinking about Rehoboam. What's going to happen to it all? Your days are painful. You have the busy head at night and then guess what?

All of your anxiety and all your hand wringing is going to result in you keeping the same amount of it as you did if you hadn't thought about it at all. You will keep none of it, none, vanity. So the idea can obviously lead to despair, right?

That's why we don't hear a lot of motivational talks from Ecclesiastes. Your life is meaningless. You're going to die. Somebody worse than you is going to get it all. What is the point, right? That's what he says.

There's no reason to doctor it up. All of your labor, all of it, all of your labor and striving under the sun is vanity. Chasing after the wind, folly, futility. It doesn't matter if you do it or not.

Everyone though has to do it, don't we? Isn't this the joke of it all? That under the sun, no matter what you do, it does not matter. You will die and you will get none of it, but everybody has to do it.

Because if you don't do it, you just die earlier, right? And everybody hates you. And then you have the busy head even worse at night because you're a big, fat loser. Aren't you? Visualize the person who doesn't strive for the fruit of their labor under the sun.

If they take it to the extreme, they're living under a bridge somewhere, aren't they? Did Solomon see that in his day? Of course. There were people, the simple-minded, the foolish, who did not even try to strive under the sun, and it would seem like they're doing what Solomon

That's the logical outcome, right? If none of it matters anyway, then don't do it. It's like Andy Bernard in The Office, right? Andy Bernard does not lose. If he thinks he's going to lose, he doesn't play.

That's what it seems like you might should do. Just don't play. But that doesn't work either, does it? So is the scripture See, what we know. We read it in the Dominion Mandate, right? The scripture tells us that we have to work.

The scripture tells us to take dominion. The scripture even tells us to leave inheritance to our kids. It says if you don't work, you don't eat. It says that a man who does not take care of his family is worse than an infidel, worse than someone who hates God.

You want to find out what's bad? Men, you want to be the worst you can be? Don't take care of your family. You're worse than a Muslim. They are more righteous than you if you do that. Because even the most pagan, God-hating people understand naturally that you have to take care of your own people.

Does 21st century Christianity believe that? My answer is definitively not. Look where we spend our time and our money. Not here. We let our area go to hell so that we can dig ditches in Rwanda. What does Solomon say?

Vanity. Vanity. And it gets difficult to talk about that kind of stuff because is there anything wrong with sending money to Rwanda? No. Is there anything wrong with sending missionaries to Southeast Asia?

Of course not. The problem is if you're doing that and not doing the first thing, that's a problem. Solomon understands that he is taking care of his son. He has given him all of the advantage and it's not going to work.

Pietism and the Neglect of Ordinary Christian Duties

So there are ditches involved in this vanity. One of the ditches that we are very afflicted with. Listen, this is one of those atmospheric thing, guys. You don't know you're afflicted with this and you might get mad at me here in a second, but you are afflicted with it.

I'm just telling you. And this is the insidious, disgusting view of pietism. It is disgusting. It has wrecked the church. Here's what pietism says. Of course everything's vanity except your church attendance, your Bible study, and your prayer.

See, the pietist says that all of the problems in life come from your lack of spiritual disciplines. The pietist says, all that matters, all that matters is that you pray and read the Bible. It sounds good, doesn't it?

That's the only eternal things you're doing, except that's not what scripture says. That's not how scripture is written. Take it to its logical conclusion. What if all of the great men of the Bible just did that?

What if Daniel prayed to the Lord all night long, waited for the prayer, and then didn't tell anybody what God told him? Didn't he have to go and deliver the message to the king? But see, the pietist would say, doesn't matter, the king, that's a different kingdom.

Christ's kingdom is not of this world. See what pietism does is it gives the appearance of godliness with none of the righteousness, none of the work. It's a ditch. So if everything's vanity and all of our work is going to burn up, then the only thing you should do is pray and read the Bible and then be sure to post about that on Instagram.

You absolutely must do that because if you're going to be a pietist, one of the most insidious things about pietism is you have to let everybody know how pious you are. Super critical to the movement, right?

Because John Piper will rage at you from the pulpit about how dare you collect seashells on the beach when you could be preaching the gospel. That's pietism. Don't you understand how absurd it is? It can't work because you have to work.

What if you just preach the gospel all the time? Then you're worse than an infidel because you don't feed your family. Make sense? Are you seeing it? Rice said, don't preach the gospel. That's how pietists react to this kind of stuff.

Look, we love the gospel. It is the wisdom of God unto salvation. But at the same time, when you imbibe enough Solomon without the balance, you might start just being reductionistic and going, yep, checked off the box.

I go to church every week. I'm good with God. All the while, nothing is happening. There's another ditch. It's the ditch of laziness. If it doesn't matter, then just relax. Just chill, bro. But this is also vanity, and it's also evil.

You're not supposed to be lazy. Don't be like a cretin, lazy, gluttonous liars. Don't be like them. We have to work. Even if the work under the sun is vanity, we still have to do it. And then there is a third ditch.

How do you... I don't know how you get three ditches. This might be like one of those divided highways. It's got one down the middle of it, all right? So the left, the middle, and the right. The ditch of the middle.

I love that. I love that. That's anti-Kellerism. We have a ditch in the middle. All right? Here's the ditch in the middle. And over... This is actually probably on the right. An overemphasis on labor.

An overemphasis on labor. This is less common in our day. And I'm gonna tell you, with the extremely soft-handed pastoral class we have today, this is like almost an extinct animal, all right? This is the workaholic.

This is the workaholic. Now, not a lot of workaholics anymore, unless there's something really bad going on at home. But the traditional thing is a workaholic is a workaholic because they are trying to escape what's going on in their family.

It's easier to work than it is to work with your wife, because you don't like your wife. But you can't say that because you'll get kicked out of church because you're a pietist. You understand how this all wraps together?

There has to be balance. It's not third-way-ism. Solomon is going to teach us balance. You cannot be lazy. You cannot be a pietist. There is more to the Christian life, more to the Christian life than your spiritual disciplines.

They are critical. They are fundamental. But do you understand, if you hold to the fundamentals and that's all you ever do, that's like a sixth-grade basketball player. You have to be able to do more things than the fundamentals, right?

You have to. Think of the great athletes. Think of a great scholar. Think of a great craftsman. They have the fundamentals, but that's not what makes them great. So we have to have the fundamentals. Fathers, is there balance in your striving and your pleasure, in the physical and the spiritual, in the work, in the family?

There should be balance. You should take care of your family, and you should work hard. You should take care of spiritual disciplines, and you should make physical gains. All right? You should have pleasure, but you should not have overmuch pleasure, because that's vanity too.

You should keep striving, but don't trust in the striving. For the son, hear this well, kids, Noah, there's going to be an inheritance someday, Lord willing, and it is a tremendous evil, a great evil, for you to take an inheritance and turn it into a curse.

Many of us, many of us have living parents, right? And our parents are going to pass us stuff. Do you honor them, or do you dishonor them? To dishonor them is a great evil. To take it for yourself, like the prodigal son, and buy a bunch of vapor, that may be literal today, okay, but to buy a bunch of stuff that's not going to mean anything is dishonoring, and it's a great evil.

You have to honor God, and you can't honor God without honoring your parents. Sons, it is a great evil to treat the fruit of your father's labor as a ticket to rest easy and to squander it. As much as I would like to, you don't just get to get the windfall and buy a sports car with it.

Does our culture tell you you should? Of course it does. That was free gain, baby, and I'm a Gen Xer, so I'm kind of in the middle of that. The boomer idea is you still want to go on cruises. The good thing is I'm kind of afraid of boats, so I don't really want to go on a cruise, but the thing is, you will surely want to spend it for your comfort, and you surely should not, right?

There's balance in everything. Now let's change the lens. Guys, that's a downer, isn't it? Let's recap. You're going to work hard, and let's say you're extremely successful at working hard. All of that fruit of your labor is completely meaningless.

You're going to die. You're going to leave it to someone. That person may or may not be wise with it. You have no way of knowing and no way of controlling it. It's going to go away. No one will remember who you are, what is the point, who cares, and then the lens shifts.

Enjoyment as a Gift from God

These are glorious verses. Let them roll over you. I'm glad that Brady had a long prayer after because it rattled me emotionally, all right? There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and have his soul see good in his labor.

This also I have seen, that it is from the hand of God, for who can eat and who can have enjoyment outside of him? For to a man who is good before him, he has given wisdom and knowledge and gladness, while to the sinner, he has given the endeavor of gathering and collecting so that he may give to the one who is good before God.

This too is vanity and striving after the wind. Let me be a little undisciplined and get to the end first and just tell you, don't you read that? And the big question becomes, how can I be good before him?

Because it's the only way anything's going to matter, right? That's what Solomon says. He gives this whole treatise. Your pleasure is vain. Your work is vain. Your wisdom is vain. None of it matters. And then there's this little epilogue, right?

And the epilogue is, if you know it came from the hand of God, it's really good. And God gives you everything if you're good in his sight. And the question is, how do we be good in his sight? But let's go back and let's look at some trouble.

There is a hidden negative in this. There is nothing better for a man to eat and drink and have his soul see good in his labor. And he has seen that that is from the hand of God. Discontentment abounds in our culture.

We are defined probably foremost by lying. We really love murder in our culture too, but we love lying. We love murder. And we really love discontentment. And discontentment is one of the real ways that we got here.

We shirk gratitude because one of the atmospheric things around us is that we did it all. We did it. The forefathers did it. They took all the political philosophy of the ancient world and in Europe, and they came up with an exceptional nation with holy founding documents.

Thou shalt follow the constitution. Right? And what we think is these geniuses, Washington, Madison, Adams, all of these guys, John Jay, these guys were undoubtedly great men. But what we think is these guys did it.

They solved the political code and they created this country. Boom. And why do we think that we have to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and work on our self-sufficiency in order to keep on what our ancestors gave us?

The reason why is because it was baked into the cake, friends. There's no gratitude for God. We did this by our ingenuity. We are powerful because of our military. We have the greatest wealth in the history of the world because we are capitalists.

And what is missing from the whole equation is that God only gives to those who are good. And if you're not good, do you know what he's doing? He's giving you a bunch of stuff so that the church can take it.

You may not know that right now. Friends, we, and I say myself, you cannot live in America today without buying into some extent autonomous liberty. You did it. Congratulations. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps.

If I'm on the right, I overcame an evil government and I've made my own way. And then what happens is it never satisfies. I bought my house. I live in comfort and ease and it doesn't satisfy. In the church, we find our own teachers.

We developed our own theology. We know our theology. We have amassed these great men for ourselves who have given us peerless doctrine and yet now I'm restless in my own church. Vanity. Did you know, friends, you do know this, most of you guys, most of you guys believe in the doctrines of grace, right?

And that God is sovereign over everything. But let me ask you this, do you really know this? Do you really believe this? That God has appointed your family, your work, your church, and your government.

You are living in exactly the government that God has appointed you to live in. Even when evil structures are everywhere, did you know that they are working to bring you good and to bring God glory? We have politicians literally, literally trying to buy votes with $5 ,000 now.

That's where we are, in the banana republic of America, and do you know why that's happening? For your good. I don't know why, and that gets into the office of speculation, but I will tell this. I think that a lot of this happens because we have lived in a haze of pretend world and Christians have to wake up.

Paul would say in Ephesians, arise, oh sleeper. I think the church, I think the church, there may be some stirrings, but I think we've been asleep for a long time. We've been pacified by our pietism. We've been emasculated by our desires, and we have run through and accepted what is unnatural to our great detriment.

And friends, we know this, and we don't really know it because it's hard with the local expression. Right? It's hard with a small group, but you have to understand that a church that's not asleep cannot tolerate what's going on in our country.

We have abortion because Christians supported it. The Southern Baptist Convention supported it. Did you know that? They wanted, they wanted the right to choose. We have rampant sodomy in America today because we have to have thought leaders in Christendom write books about how we should handle people who are same-sex attracted.

Guys, pretending like the question is complicated, there's a lot that's complicated in the world. Solomon's writing about much of it. That's not one of the things that's complicated. Those are sinful desires that should be mortified.

And what we do, and I harp on this a lot, but we need to hear it, and I need to hear it because there's a temptation. It's easy, it's easy to get in physical altercations with your brother growing up.

You know that? And Jake knows that. It's easy to get in physical altercations with your brother because you always know there's a line, right? He's probably not going to take out a knife and try to kill you, right?

Similarly, in the church, we amass teachers for ourself, we get our own pet doctrines, and we like to constantly fight inside. And the reason we like to fight inside is because it's just the same idea.

We know that Christians are bound by restraint and that we're not going to actually take out the knife and try to kill each other. But if you take it into the world, we know from both Old and New Testament, we saw that the prophets were sawn in half, the prophets were killed.

We saw in the New Testament that the apostles would turn the world upside down, and the magistrates did not like that, and they would kill. And that's why, friends, we are asleep as a church because we do not fight out where they can kill us.

We would rather throw Nerf balls as hard as we can at each other inside the church because the Nerf ball is not going to kill you, but the real thing will. Why do we do this? I think it's because we are very discontent.

We are seeking after worldly pleasures and wealth, and we shirk gratitude even when we get them. And the church has been fat and wealthy, and the church has amassed influential teachers who look just like that, don't they?

Fat and wealthy, soft-handed, girly guys who are afraid to even admit that women sin. Here's a newsflight. Did you know this? Women sin. They do. They sin grievously and in different ways than men. But people are terrified to say stuff like that.

So the church sleeps, and all of it seems like vanity. And this is where the lens, we shift and we get positive. Contentment is found only in God. Am I giving you new information? No. Everyone knows that.

If I'd said, because we're catechized, right? If I'd said, where do you find contentment? Every person in this room would have said, God. No new information. And yet we don't believe it, do we? And this is where orthodoxy does not translate to orthopraxy.

What we believe does not come out in what we do. This is not an ethereal idea of contentment. This is saying, you can measure yourself and look at yourself and ask your friends, do you have the correct affections and desires?

Because if your desires and your affections are wrong, you will not be content. It's impossible. It's impossible to be content. It's impossible to make your food taste better when you are not giving glory to God.

It might taste better for a little while, but you're not going to love the one who gave it to you and you are going to strive with bitterness and discontent. Many Christians will say the right things over and over and over again.

And we never ask anyone around us to check us. Am I content? Or am I searching for something that never fills up? I know your friends can tell you. Husbands, can your wives tell you? Wives, can your husbands tell you?

They know something's wrong. We never ask the question, are you content? Are you happy in the Lord? See, I say it all the time because I think it's true. Christianity should be really fun. You know what?