Cornerstone Church - Atlanta, GA

When God saved us, He didn't just take out of danger, He took us into His family. Because we are adopted we have God as Father and glory in our future.

Weakness isn't a curse, it's a gift from God that makes us humble, dependent, and ultimately strong. True strength comes through weakness.

You biggest fight in life is a fight against isolation, not imperfections. In Ecclesiastes 4, we're challenged to accept life's imperfections while fighting to avoid isolation.

God's promises of future judgment is meant to keep our hearts from being discouraged, it's not meant to keep our hands from getting dirty. God's promises free us from the anxiety that comes from worrying about the future. The fact that He has the future covered gives us the freedom to spend this one life we have to live well.

The key to finding joy in this life comes from realizing the limits that are placed on us. Life is meant to be managed, not manipulated. The sooner we understand that, the sooner we can enjoy our present life as a gift from God. Ecclesiastes 3 we see three truths that must be grasped in order for us to have present joy. You aren't in control. God has complete control. God has perfect control.

God given resources are meant to be shared, not hoarded.

Everyone is a counselor, the issue is whether you'll be a good one or not. Christians have a responsibility to speak into situations with wisdom of God. The church grows to maturity as Christians embrace their responsibility to give advice, comfort, and correction.

If you fail to plan, you plan to pail. Sayings like that communicate the reality that looking to the future is the key to our success. And while that may be the case, the future is also the very thing that fuels our present anxiety. Anxiety can either cause you live for LATER (obsess over the future) or LOITER (ignore the future and just enjoy now). The future may be the key to our earthly success, but as the writer of Ecclesiastes reflects on two future certainties that we can't escape (Our death and our descendants), he challenges our perspective on the future and how we live in the present. He shows us why putting our hope for meaning in merely securing a better future on earth makes for a terrible way to live in the present.

Everyone of us goes through life with a nagging sense that something's missing. There's a feeling of emptiness that leads to attempts on our part to fill the emptiness. For those of us that consider ourselves good and moral, it's easy to think that our biggest battle is to stay away from immoral pleasures in favor of immoral pleasures. However, the author of Ecclesiastes seems to think different. Innocent pleasures, don't always make for innocent pursuits. Sometimes our pursuit of very innocent things, can distract us from our true purpose of finding our true pleasure in God. We have to remember that we have an eternal palette that will swallow up every earthy pleasure and still leave you as an empty person. We were never meant to fill up on earthly pleasures but something more. God's gift to us is that earthly pleasures are only to serve as signposts towards the real pleasure--Himself!

Knowledge is power. It's a statement that we're all too familiar with. We know how powerful knowledge can be because we know the pain that ignorance can cause. We've all known the regret that comes along with the statement, "if only I knew then what I know now." Lack of knowledge about certain things seems to be the source of pain and loss in many of our lives. Knowledge, seems like something that would make our lives better. Until we look at the book of Ecclesiastes. The Author of the book gives us interesting thoughts on knowledge. Knowledge may drive us to answers, but we often find that agony is sitting in the passenger seat. In a broken world, it seems like the more that you learn, the more you lament. Far from solving all of our problems, knowledge tends to create additional problems. How should we treat the pursuit of knowledge in a fallen world? Is there any place where this pursuit of knowledge won't ultimately let us down?