Crush the Idols

 

Anything I put before my God is an idol. - Jimmy Needham

  We all know of when the children of Israel, frustrated that they couldn't see their God, decided that they needed a god they could touch and feel instead. They told Moses to create a "Golden Calf" to be their god. Countless times they have fallen from grace and have absorbed themselves in idolatry. They wanted what the surrounding nations had - the customs, the practices and the idols.

  But, before we point fingers, we should assess what an idol actually is. In it's simplest form it may be an image, such as the golden calf, that one sets up before himself to worship. But, it's more than that. Anything I put before my God is an idol. Anything that I love so much that it distracts me from my purpose in God is an idol. Anything that takes up the time that I should be spending with God is an idol. Anything that causes me to compromise my faith just so that I can have it is an idol.

   So, that girl or that guy that you can't stop thinking about can be an idol. That job that prevents you from going to church and giving God the glory. Or maybe that car that you think is too beautiful for anyone to even touch. The truth is that anything that arrests your mind is an idol.

   Have you ever wanted to pray and all that comes out of your mouth is the routine prayer? You follow the protocol and you pray how you're expected to pray but you never really tell God anything.  And when you say amen and you get up off your knees you get up with the same problem that you went to pray about in the first place.

  It's time to be real and open with God. We pray for material blessings: money, good grades, success.  And while we pray our fake prayer, our souls are dying. It's rotting from all the junk and dirt that we've filled it with. All the hurt and pain, the guilt and the shame. We can't really share our pain because we know that all we'll get in return is fake smiles and secret judgment. So we carry our pain. We carry all the weight and the shame and we stray further and further away from God.

 We sing the songs, read the scripture and listen to the sermon. Yet we go back home with the same pressing issue. We're still dying and nobody knows and it seems like nobody cares. Just moved but never changed.

   The truth is that God already knows what you're going to ask even before you ask it. He knows what you need. And it may seem difficult, you may not even want to utter it for fear of someone else hearing, but He wants you to tell it to Him. He wants you to lay it at his feet and leave it there. You don't carry yourself, He carries you.

    So, you may be overwhelmed with countless pain and you feel that God does not understand. But the apostle Paul reminds us that our High Priest can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities. He not only understands your pain, He feels your pain.

   You may be distracted from your purpose in God right now but don't feel that you have to stay that way. Countless times the people of God have turned away from Him and when they returned, as with the prodigal son, their father welcomed them with open arms.

    I'm not just speaking to those who have backslidden and left the church. I'm speaking to everyone, including myself. It's so easy to look the part - dress the right way, sing the right way and testify the right way. Do all of that and you can fool just anyone, but not God. So you may be reading this and thinking of your unsaved or backslidden friend, but understand that it is time for all of us to return.

  The truth is that we all have an idol or two. We all have something that takes our undivided attention away from God. And it weighs us down. But God is calling us to a place of reflection. It is time for us to shine the searchlights in every corner and every crevice of our being. It's time for us to look into ourselves: our thoughts, our actions, our speech. It's time to crush the idols.