Let's take a look at our voracious soul appetite. Then we can consider not only the deceitfulness and futility of our idols, but our TRUE LOVER, the only one who can free a woman of idolatry, which if we are honest, is a struggle we all have. Idols cannot be removed, only replaced, because our soul hunger is not going to go away
The song that goes with this post’s theme is "Jesus Calls Us."
Bible Study:
1. Try to picture an image of a heart with a hole in it. Meditate on this verse from Ecclesiastes 3:11:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. (NIV)
A. What has God set in the human heart?
B. What does this mean?
C. Pascal called it a “God-shaped vacuum,” which reminds me of the whirlpool analogy. What does a vacuum, and a whirlpool have in common?
D. How has your soul been like a whirlpool? What have you devoured in an attempt to feed your soul hunger? Be specific, please—and write down the results too.
E. What mystery do you see in Ecclesiastes 3:11?
2. Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, felt this vacuum in his soul and couldn't imagine how to fill it. He felt pain, boredom, and a longing for relief. Find phrases that describe this in Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:1-11.
3. Then he goes on a pursuit to try to fill this hole. List both the ways he tried to fill it and how he felt when his “whirlpool” sucked up these things in each of the following passages:
A. What did his soul hunger try to feed on and how did he feel in 1:13-18? (This is not godly wisdom, but “under the sun” or worldly wisdom)
B. What did his soul hunger try to feed on and how did he feel in Ecclesiastes 2:1-21?
C. He continues to embrace worldly wisdom and wine, but adds to his quest in Ecclesiastes 2:3-11. If a phrase jumps out at you, the Spirit may be quickening you, so slow down, turn it over, and see if God is speaking to you. List your discoveries and meditations here.
4. This is such a fascinating book—one of my favorite study-guides is "A Woman of Contentment," and it contains T. M. Moore’s wonderful contemporary paraphrase of Ecclesiastes. Here are a few phrases from that paraphrase. Meditate and on each:
Amazingly, he was able to keep the iambic pentameter rhyme, so it needs to be read like that, aloud:
A. Ecclesiastes 1:4
What does a man retain beyond the grave
from all the work in which he, like a slave,
consumes his days, as though this early life
were all there is? What’s left from all this strife
and struggle?
B. Ecclesiastes 1:14
I could not be content to stay
within the orbit of his love. Instead
I set a course—but now I am ahead
of where I meant to be. Suffice it here
to say that if this earthly life is dear
to us above all else, that is, if we
deny heaven’s claims upon our lives and see
ourselves as beings of this space in time
and nothing more, then neither things sublime
nor silly will cohere or satisfy,
I've tried it all, my son, I will deny
it not. And it is vain, I tell you, vain!
Like feeding on the wind.
What can you take away from this post?
