It is the Lord your God you must follow, and Him you must revere. Keep His commands and obey Him; serve Him and hold fast to Him. ~Deuteronomy 13:4 (NIV)
God doesn’t tell us to follow, revere, obey, serve, and hold fast to Him for His benefit. He wants us to do it for our benefit and we should look at those things that distract us from our relationship with God and what He wants us to be doing with our time, energy, and resources as what the enemy has brought into our lives to try to set us up for failure. Following the word of God sets us up to be successful. It might sound ridiculous to say you worship worry more than you worship your God, but what occupies your time? Is it your problems or the goodness of your Lord that you have been meditating on? Are you more worried about what others think or expect than you are about what God does? Scripture teaches that anything we put before the Lord is idolatry. Many of us have seen the movies with God’s people dancing around the golden calf, not realizing we dance around golden calves every day without even knowing it. We worship money, careers and even people not taking into account that God’s requirement for a successful life is loving Him first! We would do well to remember that the biggest issue for God in the Old Testament was idol worship, and that issue didn’t end centuries ago.
In a nutshell, modern day idolatry is self-worship and self-worship is often seen in the form of addiction. Self-worship teaches us to form dependences on and around things other than God. Just as in ancient times the people trained themselves to lean on things that couldn’t help them, today we are doing the same instead of training ourselves to trust God. Our idols are merely the object of our affections. Just like idolatry, addiction, or obsessions more often than not begins with a disappointment or distress in our life. Instead of seeking God, we choose an agent to deal with the distress. We look to something other than God as the source or answer to our problem. The agent promises freedom, a sense of being in control, a sense of being above our problems, a sense of being liberated, a sense of escape. And so, we "buy in". We become workaholics, alcoholics and shopaholics looking for relief that only God can truly bring. At the end of the day, our idols haven't delivered us from our problems. For the most part they have only perpetuated them. David said in Psalm 34:8 “Taste and see that the Lord is good.” (NIV) One of the best ways to overcome idolatry in our lives is to worship and it’s worshipping Him who is worthy of our worship, not worshipping what makes us feel better for a little while. We must put God back on the throne in our lives and move our dependence back to Him. That can sometimes mean trusting Him just to get us through the next minute. We need to be moved by God in worship to repentance which always brings refreshment. What the world has to offer pales to that kind of refreshment! Have you ever tasted the goodness of God in worship? If so, you know what it means to taste and see that the Lord is good. Actually, He is irreplaceable, so stop beating yourself up over what you haven't gotten right and start worshipping your God. It's in worship we shake of our bondage!
Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker ~Psalm 95:6 (NIV)
Is it your problems or the goodness of your Lord that you have been meditating on?
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