The Search for Meaning: Part 2 - Richard E. Simmons III

How much of your life have you wasted trying to impress others? How much different would your life be if you were delivered from the fear and worry about what others think of you? Today we're looking again at what Solomon has to say about our work in the book of Ecclesiastes.

Solomon says this, “What does the worker gain from his toil? I’ve seen the burden God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the heart of men.” Solomon is saying that our lives are linked to eternity because we are eternal beings. And he says, because of that, we desire a permanence to our lives. We would like to think that our lives are going to have a permanence and a stamp and a significance in this life that I’ve lived.

If Jesus were standing before us today, and if we asked Him to make a comment about our work and success and the fruit of our labor, I wonder what would He say to us? I believe that out of love, He might tell us the same thing He told his disciples. Now Jesus always told them not what they wanted to hear, what they needed to hear. And this to me is a powerful, powerful verse from Mark 8:36, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”