05-25-2014
Exodus 20:3 - “You shall have no other gods before Me.”
Many of us are well aware that money, possessions, sex, drugs, alcohol, food, power, popularity, or any number of things can become idols in our lives. But have we realized that in being consumed by angst, fear, anger and worry over illness, or joblessness, or social ills, or any number of difficulties or problems that they can become idols... as well? They become a priority for us. They take up our energy. They move us away from relationship with God because they can consume our attention almost completely.
Worship (as opposed to the understanding of just being Sunday morning services) is an act that is meant to be continual and deserves all of our energy and responsiveness. If we are exerting most or all of our drive to focusing on a problem, personally or societally; then we are effectively making that single problem a “little g” god in our lives because we are expending more vitality dealing with it than communing with and trusting God. We have placed it on a pedestal in the center of our full view. We become idolatrous in that moment.
I am a prideful man in so many ways. I can even manage to be proud of how humble I can be. (If you look irony up in the dictionary, there’s probably a picture of that next to it.)
I offer this admission to repent of a sin that I struggle with too often. That being said, it is a struggle that becomes less of a problem each time God reminds me that false humility leads to nothing but more strife in any given situation. Over and over again in my own failures, and in His victories, I am reminded of this truth… God is never wrong, and I am never as right as I think I am.
That is why it is so important to rely on only that voice that speaks from outside of our experience and knowledge. If we don’t, then all of the things that we get caught up arguing against or fearing, especially those that we find ourselves the most stridently, righteously, and passionately opposed to, become a distraction for us that borders on sinful. We are simply tools, not the Artisan. And all the tool should focus on is the hand that uses it.
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