We are natural worshipers. Whether you believe in God or not, our natural tendency as human beings is to worship. We worship in a variety of ways and, unfortunately, a variety of things and people. It is impossible to live in our society, our world, and not worship. But the pain and struggle that we experience in this life is often a result of us worshiping creation, rather than the Creator. When we do this, we make a person, a thing, or an idea our Ultimate. And this inevitably ends in devastation.

We can worship anything: a person, a job, a relationship, success, control, approval, money, knowledge, comfort, anything. And we can do this in many different ways. The pursuit of our hearts and minds reflects what we worship. The problem is, we have been created with a hole in our heart that can only be filled by one thing, yet we seek all these different ways to satisfy what only God can.

Whatever we worship, we place our value and our worth in. This becomes problematic and destructive to us when we worship anything apart from God because the only thing that will never fail us is God's love. He is the only perfect, constant, loving force. Everything and everyone else will inevitably fail us at some point. Therefore, if our worship is in anything but Christ, we will eventually be disappointed, heartbroken, and empty.

This is not to say that people, things, goals, and ideas should not be valued or enjoyed. God created this world with joys to be experienced, including people, work, and things. But he also created us with a need for him. However, because we are sinful and broken, we try and fill this need with creation rather than with God. And that is the root of so much of our pain and confusion.

If God is not our Ultimate, our worth and value are tied to things or people that will inevitably let us down. And when these Earthly things and people fail us, we are left with an identity crisis and begin to question who we are. We question our worth and lose sight of our value if it is not tied to this person, this job, this family life, this level of success, this approval. Whatever we make Ultimate controls us and defines us.

So, what is our Ultimate? We have to ask ourselves the hard questions and hear the hard truth. If we lost X, Y, or Z, would our lives still have meaning? If we were stripped of everything but Christ, would we still recognize our worth and value in him? Where are we placing our joy?

If God is not our Ultimate, life will hurt. And obviously, because we are sinners, we will never reach a place where we can honestly say that God is our only Ultimate. But that is why we have grace. That is where God's love and mercy meet us. He is sufficient even though we are not.

But despite knowing that our sinful nature will always draw us toward other things, pursuing a relationship with Christ means continually pursuing our identity in him and recognizing when we are not doing this. It means continually giving up or losing the things that take priority over God. It means continually being convicted of who and what we are worshiping apart from God. It's about letting God take anything from us that we desire more than him.

So, we have to ask ourselves what our Ultimate is. And if the answer is not God, we must ask God to prepare our hearts, and to remove the gods we've placed in his position. It will hurt and it will break our hearts. But that devastation only occurs because we've made Ultimate what God intended to merely be a joy or pleasure, but not a god. It is a hard, challenging race and to walk with God means a lot of loss. But ultimately, it's not about finding our contentment in Christ, it's about recognizing our discontent in everything else. It's about realizing that in order to find God, we sometimes have to lose a lot. But the Bible promises us a gain that cannot compare to the loss we experience in this life. So, we must look "to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross," and we must too, pick up our cross, follow him, and find the real Ultimate (Hebrews 12:2).