We all have faith in something, but it may not be God. We all serve something, we all make something in our lives supreme, we all worship something but it may not be God. Too often we find that we worship ourselves while becoming liable to something that we make our own god. We quickly ridicule the Israelites for creating and worshiping a golden calf, but aren’t we all guilty of the same thing?
What have you placed your value in? We have things in our lives that, if taken from us, will bring forth great pain. Those are our gods. We continue to sacrifice the deep joy and love of a relationship with God for superficial pleasure. We can tell ourselves all that we want about how we are in control, but if we cannot give it up then we do not own it, it owns us. What we worship reflects where our heart is and what our god is. Perhaps you worship money, social status, sex, or alcohol. The problem lies in the fact that God created these things to be enjoyed but only in their proper context. Maybe we do our best to worship Jesus, but even then we find that we are worshiping the idea of Him or His teachings more than The Lord himself. When it really comes down to it, no matter what we find ourselves worshiping, it is a reflection of a problem within our heart.
What is it that we have made the ultimate goal in our life? This becomes especially difficult when we have been blessed with so much. We love what God blesses us with, but it seems as though we would rather just take the stuff and have God back out of the picture. It’s las if we are saying, “Thank you so much for all of this stuff, but you should leave now so I can enjoy it.” We make a terrible trade with The Creator of the universe. God offers us eternal life with Him and instead we are content with our gadgets and toys. To give up our possessions seems so undesirable, but why is it that we are willing to give up our soul for a temporary high of pleasure. We attempt to remove The Lord from His throne and be our own gods, but yet… “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He died on the cross for our transgressions with the full knowledge that we would still look into His eyes and say that we don’t need Him.
Let us do what we can to restore God to His proper place in our lives. You are loved by God right now, no matter what place in your life you are in. Whether you are on a mountain high of faith or you are still seeking a way to get out of the valley of despair, you are loved where you are. We need to stop making something else into a pseudo-savior so that we don’t have to go to God because the idea that we have control is merely an illusion. The idols that we have placed our trust in will always let us down and the only way to experience freedom from our idols is to be lost in God.
For we know what the Truth is because it became a person and now a relationship is what lets the truth in. In a world where it is so easy to place our faith in something else, I pray that we strive to restore our relationship with God in full knowledge that false gods will never satisfy our needs and the only thing that will is the death and the resurrection of Christ.
