ONE HOLY GOD

“The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the purposes of His heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people He has chosen as His inheritance!”  (Psalm 33:11-12 NIV)

The first article of Christian faith is that man has one and only one true object of worship.  There is one Holy God, creator of heaven and earth.  He is Lord of all life.  To Him we are beholden for our life in all its meaning and its hope. Monotheism for the Christian means that anything else which is put in the place of our loyalty to God is an idol.  The worship of national power, or racial prestige, or financial success, or cultural tradition, is a violation of the one truth about life, that all created things come from God.  To commit life to the one true God is to refuse to have any other gods at all.  Values there are in abundance -- interests, plans, programs, loyalties to family and nation.  But these are not gods; they do not save us; they are not holy in themselves. 

-- Daniel Day Williams (1910-1973) in “Interpreting Theology, 1918-1952”

#5132

GETTING RID OF IDOLS

“So Jacob told everyone in his household, ‘Get rid of all your pagan idols, purify yourselves, and put on clean clothing. We are now going to Bethel, where I will build an altar to the God who answered my prayers when I was in distress. He has been with me wherever I have gone.’”  (Genesis 35:2-3  NLT)

The heart's slavish and dogged devotion to its idol is what fathers of the Church have called "the bondage of the will".  This bondage becomes most painfully apparent in our lives when we earnestly feel the need of changing but cannot; when we are attracted to another value that for one reason or another conflicts with the desires of our true god -- that value nearest and dearest to us.  But our true god lies so deeply inside us that often we are not even consciously aware of its presence or of what it actually is.

-- Robert L. Short in “The Parables of Peanuts”

#4943

BLESSED TO BE A BLESSING

The more God blesses you, the harder it is to keep that blessing from becoming an idol in your life. Money may be the best example. The more money you make, the harder it is to trust Almighty God and the easier it is to trust the Almighty Dollar. Isn't it ironic that [in the U.S.] "In God We Trust" is printed on the very thing we find most difficult to trust God with? If you are financially blessed, it is a gift from God. But God doesn't financially bless us so we can use it selfishly to acquire more things. He blesses us more so we can be more of a blessing.


-- Mark Batterson in All In




#3671

THE GIFT GIVER

If the gift ever becomes more important than the Gift Giver, then the very thing God gave you to serve His purposes is undermining His plan for your life. God is no longer the End All and Be All. And when God becomes the means to some other end, it's the beginning of the end spiritually because you have inverted the gospel.


God-given gifts are wonderful things and dangerous things. One of my recurrent prayers is this: 'Lord, don't let my gifts take me farther than my character can sustain me.' As we cultivate the gifts God has given us, we can begin to rely on those gifts instead of relying on God. That's when our greatest strength becomes our greatest weakness.


-- Mark Batterson in All In




#3670

CREATED TO WORSHIP

It is easy to see that you and I have been created to worship. We’re flat-out desperate for it. From sports fanaticism to celebrity tabloids to all the other strange sorts of voyeurisms now normative in our culture, we evidence that we were created to look at something beyond ourselves and marvel at it, desire it, like it with zeal, and love it with affection. Our thoughts, our desires, and our behaviors are always oriented around something, which means we are always worshiping -- ascribing worth to -- something. If it’s not God, we are engaging in idolatry. But either way, there is no way to turn the worship switch in our hearts off.

-- Matt Chandler in The Explicit Gospel


#3477

GOD IS OUR HELP

"God is our refuge and strength,
always ready to help in times of trouble.
So we will not fear when earthquakes come
and the mountains crumble into the sea.
Let the oceans roar and foam.
Let the mountains tremble as the waters surge!" (Psalm 46:1-3)

An idol is anything you turn to for help when God told you to turn to Him for help. 

-- Henry Blackaby


#3247

WORSHIPPING AT THE WRONG ALTAR

Martyrs teach us many things, and chief among them is the immense worth of our faith and at the same time the worthlessness of much that pretends to have value…

We are cajoled into bowing down every day before the altar of television, in the corridors of the shopping mall, in the intricacies of our minds, in the thousand little decisions we make hourly.  And it is our noble privilege to join the ranks of the martyrs and resolutely declare, "We will not serve your gods and we will not worship the statue you have set up" -- no matter what the cost.

-- James C. Howell in Servants, Misfits, and Martyrs


#3232