1 Kings 11:1-3 (NIV)
King Solomon, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They all were from nations which the LORD had told the Israelites;
“you shall not intermarry with them; you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor shall you take their daughters for your sons. “For they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods; then the anger of the LORD will be kindled against you and He will quickly destroy you.…Deuteronomy 7:3 -4
Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.
Solomon is considered to be the wisest man that ever lived, yet there are some things that he did that were not wise at all like having 700 wives and 300 concubines.
As wise as he was, Solomon had an appetite for something that God had warned Israel about; not to marry foreign women. In all his wisdom, Solomon was not able to contain his appetite for foreign women and they turned his heart away from God and that led to his down fall.
Samson also found himself in the same predicament. He has an appetite for philistine women that he could not contain and that left him captured bald and blind.
What about you and I?
Are we consumed by appetites that are robbing us of our God ordained destiny?
Yes you are born again and you love Jesus but what kind of appetites are you feeding?
Is it an appetite for an illicit office affair; are you flirtatious with your colleagues at the office?
Or maybe you just have a big appetite for ungodly movies, you have convinced yourself that you are just after the story and you can block out everything else.
Yes you go to church and you want to serve God but you just have an appetite for sex and promiscuous behavior.
Or maybe it’s something like stealing you just love the thrill of picking things that are not yours and getting away with it, or you simply have an appetite to tell lies?
Whatever it is whether you consider it big or small, the more you feed it the more it grows until you not only have 700 wives like Solomon, but you still add 300 concubines, honestly how much can one man handle?
You need to realize that your fleshly appetites are driving you further and further away from your God ordained destiny. For how long will you keep feeding your fleshly appetites? Like Esau are you willing to sell your birth rite just to feed your fleshly appetite?
Our flesh has a never-ending appetite for sin and it is always looking for its next meal. Yet by the power of God’s Spirit, we can resist the temptation to feed our flesh and instead focus on the things of God. Like Daniel Shadrack Meshack and Abednego who hungered more for the thing of God than for the things of men.
Make up your mind today to feed your godly appetites and not your fleshly ones. God strengthen and bless you more.
This devotion was written by James Martin
