No Other Gods?

Most of us who call ourselves by the name “Christian” would say that the God of the Bible is the one and only true God.  And most of us would also say that this is the only god we love and serve.  But are we sure about that?  Yesterday’s sermon at church and my own recent walk with God have got me thinking . . .

Most of my life, the first of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3) has been interpreted in terms of order: make sure the God of the Bible has the first position in my life, and then everything else that I love can find a proper place beneath him.  But this is only part of the picture.  The wording in that first commandment isn’t even about what order God has in my life among a myriad of other gods.  It literally says that I am not to allow any other gods to be in God’s presence . . . ever.  It’s not OK to give “god status” to anything besides the God of the Bible.  Period.

Most of us Christians in our culture don’t think we actually have any other gods.  We work hard to keep God first and then believe that everything else we think about and do is OK.  We’ve heard all sermons on the god of money, the god of possessions, and the god of greed, so we think we’re doing OK because we haven’t succumbed to any of those on a regular basis.  But what other things, even good things, do we allow to share God’s presence in our lives?

Jesus had a lot to say about other gods, and most of it was hard to hear; so here are some things that God has laid on my heart for us all to think about.  Do we ever allow the god of control, which can lead to the gods of fear and worry, to share the same space as the one true God (Matthew 6:25-34)?  Do we ever allow the god of comfort to keep us from stepping out to do what God is telling us to do (Matthew 8:20)?  Do we ever allow the god of family, God’s precious gift to us, to occupy the space reserved for God’s presence in our lives (Matthew 10:37)?  I could go on, but you get the picture.  Just about anything in our lives can become a god (off-and-on or all the time) when we allow it to co-exist in God’s presence.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the hard sayings of Jesus and truly have no other gods besides the one true God.  Whether we think so or not, he is truly all we need.  God’s heart is to give us good gifts, but his presence in our lives fills every hole we think we have and provides us with everything we truly need.  The more we keep him in the position he deserves – as the ONLY god in our lives – the more we learn this and recognize how relationship with him trumps anything else that could possibly vie for our attention.      

Living with Purpose

At the gym where my husband works out, this is the time of year where everything is crowded.  People have made new year’s resolutions to lose weight or exercise, and for a few weeks they stick with it.  But my husband has noticed that by March or April, things get back to normal at the gym.  The “resolution” people have lost their resolve, and the gym just has the regular attendees again who are continuing with their more permanent resolve.

I am by nature a purpose-driven person; it’s just the way I was wired by God.  Pretty much everything I do has a purpose behind it, and I typically don’t do random things.  Not everyone is made that way; so that means that not everyone approaches the task of understanding or trusting God’s purposes in the same way either.  Sometimes I think that trusting God’s purposes might be more difficult for a purpose-driven person, because the constant quest for purpose and logic causes questions that others may not even consider.  One thing I have found is that trusting God’s purposes in my life cannot be separated from knowing and trusting the other parts of him: his sovereignty, his love, his grace and mercy, and everything else that his Word tells me about his character.

Romans 8:28 tells us that God is always working in everything for what is good for us.  He is not working to make us happy but rather to fulfill his purpose for us – which is whatever conforms us to “the likeness of his Son” (Romans 8:29).   God’s actions do not depend on ours.  He will do what he knows is best regardless of what we think is fair or what makes sense to us.  Our job is not to question or seek to control the outcome but simply to “join in” where God’s purposes are being worked out and trust those purposes to be the best solution.  Joining in where God is working involves listening for his voice above all of the other voices and trusting him to take what we call bad and make it good.

I want the purposes that drive me to be God-purposes.  I don’t want to resolve to do something just because it’s the right time of year or something that everyone is doing.  I want to choose to trust what God is doing at any given time in my life and know (without doubting) that he is doing what is best for me – so that I end up looking more and more like his Son and less and less like me or anyone else in this world.  Now that’s a resolution worth keeping!

Dealing With Disappointment

Today there are a lot of disappointed people in the area where I live.  They’re disappointed because of the outcome of the Super Bowl football game last night.  And they’re especially disappointed because of the way it came about and the real hope they had during the game that the outcome would be different.  If you watched the game, you know what I’m talking about.  We had it . . . we were so close . . . it seemed like it was going to happen . . . and then it was over.  Just like that – in the blink of an eye; and disappointment set in.

The hardest part about disappointment is that we feel hope let us down.  Whenever we have disappointments in life (real ones, not just football games), we feel worse because we got our hopes up.  We dared to hope, and what we hoped for didn’t happen.  Or it didn’t happen the way we hoped it would.  Something or someone let us down.  And lots of times it doesn’t take very long for disappointment to turn into discouragement.  We go from hope to disappointment to discouragement with lightning speed.

Life on this earth is full of ups and downs.  Some of them are as eternally unimportant as the outcome of the Super Bowl game; but others touch our hearts and souls on a deeper level.  How can we properly deal with disappointment so that we remain hopeful and avoid discouragement?  Fortunately, since many things about living have not changed since time began, the Bible can give us some help in this area.  By looking at what God says to us in his Word, we are able to choose a faith-filled response to life’s disappointments.

I am happy to know when I am disappointed what Psalm 22:5 tells me: that the Israelites in the Old Testament trusted in God and found out that he didn’t disappoint them.  I’m also glad to know what God promises in Isaiah 49:23: “. . . those who hope in me will not be disappointed.”  If my hope is directed in the right direction (hope in God), I can be sure that I will not be disappointed.  And if I am, I probably need to adjust my “hope focus”.  As Phil Keaggy suggested in a song many years ago, all I need to do is change the letter “d” to an “h” and I get a whole new concept: disappointment becomes His appointment! 

But let’s get real: regardless of how hard I try, I’m going to give in to disappointment sometimes.  I’m human, and I’m not always going to get it right.  So when disappointment comes, I need to keep it from turning into discouragement – because discouragement is the enemy’s playground and can lead me further away from walking by faith.  How do I do this?  Over and over in the Old Testament, God told his people that they could avoid discouragement by remembering that he was present with them.  Having God walking by my side in this life of faith is so much more important than having no disappointment.  Knowing that he is always with me helps me turn life’s disappointments back to hope, and Romans 5:5 can help me get this right: “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.”  I’m so thankful for God’s presence in my life . . . time to shake off my latest disappointment and focus my hope in the right direction.

The Heart of the Matter

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a day designed to honor the achievements of Martin Luther King Jr. in his fight for the rights and dignity of African Americans in our country.  Unfortunately, for many people this day has turned into a glorification of the man and his cause instead of honoring what he did and glorifying God for the worth He has ascribed to all humans.

You see, Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t invent his ideas.  God is the one who decided from the beginning of his creation of the world that all people have equal value and worth.  This is based on the fact that all people have been created in the image of God himself (Genesis 1:27).  To be made in the image of God means that all humans reflect God’s nature and possess God’s character.  This is what makes all people worthy of honor and respect, regardless of the color of their skin or other differences.

The entrance of sin into the world corrupted God’s creation and the way he designed things.  Ever since the original sin in the garden of Eden, humans have judged each other by human standards – deciding what characteristics are desirable and which ones are not.  Every generation and every people group chooses different criteria to determine what makes others worthy of respect, but this has never been God’s way.  God doesn’t look at the outward appearance of people, but rather at their hearts (1 Samuel 16:7).  Every person has value in God’s eyes because he looks beyond the surface things that we can see.

On this holiday, I’m thankful for the heart of Martin Luther King Jr. and his achievements in helping our country to see others the way God sees us.  But mostly I’m thankful for the God who created us in his image and gave us value and dignity and worth.  And I want to be someone who joins with God in looking at the hearts of those around me instead of their outward appearances.    

How Carefree Are We?

Yesterday my pastor started a short series of messages about stewardship – encouraging us not to love and serve money, but to love and serve God first and foremost.  His sermon reminded me of how well God provides for us if we just get out of his way and allow him to!  We live in one of the most affluent cultures in history.  As a result, we truly can provide just about everything for ourselves without God’s help.  So I think we sometimes miss allowing God to provide for us because we are too busy taking care of ourselves.  In our culture, it is easy to depend more on ourselves and our money than we do on God.

I find it interesting that Christians are willing to trust God to provide for their souls but often find it difficult to fully entrust their physical needs to him!  I think one of the reasons for this has to do with the way in which God chooses to provide for us.  Sometimes God provides for us in miraculous ways, and sometimes he uses more common, everyday means.  If we are always looking for miracles, we may miss the common ways he works; and if we are accustomed to thinking in earthly terms, we may miss a miracle God wants to perform.  Learning to truly trust God’s provision for us involves accepting whatever method he chooses at any given time and being content with the outcome.  Stories in the Old Testament like Abraham (Genesis 22:1-14) and Joseph (Genesis 50:20) help us to see that God’s way of providing is always best.

Trusting God’s provision and obeying his calling on our lives should produce obvious and tangible results.  If we trust God fully to provide for us, we have the freedom to be generous with what we have been given; and God’s generosity with us should lead to our generosity with others.  When we trust God to provide for us, we don’t have to worry about running out of resources.  As Jesus pointed out in Matthew 6:25-34, it is possible and desirable for us to get rid of being preoccupied with earthly things and to relax and live free, unfettered lives where we can be truly “carefree”.  This allows us to share generously with others whatever God has given us, whether money and other earthly possessions or spiritual gifts.  When we trust God to provide for us, we can focus our attention on more important things – toward God and others.

“Lord, You are more precious than silver

Lord, You are more costly than gold

Lord, You are more beautiful than diamonds

And nothing I desire compares with You.”

(Lynn DeShazo, ©1982 Integrity’s Hosanna! Music) 

New Year Thoughts

It’s another new year.  So are you excited, concerned, or indifferent about that?  I think how I answer that question reveals something about my personality and the way I’m wired.  Some people like changes, and others don’t.  Newness can be scary, and even God-ordained changes require adjustments.  Changes move us out of our comfort zone and bring with them a loss of predictability and a lack of security.  Newness takes away some of the things we have been able to count on.  I don’t know everything that this new year will bring, and that can result in a feeling of unrest.  I want the newness brought about by changes to feel just-as-good as everything was before the changes.

But how I answer that question also reveals something about my faith.  It’s important that we find our security in God’s unchanging qualities instead of looking at our changing lives here on earth for answers, focusing on God’s unchanging nature instead of our experiences.  Because our spiritual, physical, and emotional lives are all inter-connected, sometimes God ordains physical or emotional changes, as well as lifestyle changes, in order to effect the spiritual changes he wants in us.  Many times we seek to control the changes by manipulating our circumstances rather than trusting God’s work in us and walking by faith.  We have to be willing to trust him enough to trust the process rather than getting sidetracked by the individual changes as they occur.

As I start a new year, I want to be more excited than concerned.  I want to see the newness as a gift from God as he continues to work in my life and grow me.  And I want to be able to experience the peace and contentment that come from trusting God when changes happen:

Isaiah 26:3-4:

“You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you! . . . the Lord God is the eternal Rock” (NLT).

“People with their minds set on you, you keep completely whole . . . Depend on God . . . in the Lord God you have a sure thing” (MSG).

Peace and contentment come because we are supported by God’s unchanging love and power – not our own – and, therefore, change is not able to shake us.  We look to God to provide our contentment and security and discover that we are whole because in him we have a sure thing regardless of what is going on around us or happening to us.

I don’t know exactly what this new year will bring, but I know that an unchanging God who loves me will not be surprised by anything that happens.  I know he can be trusted to do what is best for me and to walk with me every step of the way.  With those things in mind, I can say without reservation, “Happy New Year”!

How's Your Christmas Joy?

We are deep into another Christmas season, and the question begs to be asked: how’s your Christmas joy?  Is joy the first word that comes to your mind when you think about Christmas?  Or do other words – mostly ones that shouldn’t be repeated – better describe your thoughts about this season?  Who decided that joy and Christmas should go hand in hand?

Actually, it wasn’t some smiling, always positive person who came up with the idea so we would sing more carols, buy more gifts, or bake more cookies in order to be joyful.  The idea came from God.  That’s because the real reason for joy at Christmas is summed up in another word: Immanuel.  The reason we can and should be joyful during this season (and all year ‘round!) is because God is with us. 

In Philippians, right after the apostle Paul tells us to rejoice all the time, he tells us why: “The Lord is near” (Philippians 4:5).  Apparently joy has nothing to do with us or our circumstances or anything earthly; joy has everything to do with God.  Joy is possible in every situation (always, as Paul puts it) because God is always with us.  The gift we received when Jesus became human on that first Christmas, and the gift that we celebrate every Christmas, is the gift of God with us – always present, always available – in our past before we knew it, in our present regardless of what we’re doing, and in our future before we get there.

In John 14, Jesus told his disciples that the Holy Spirit would be coming to them (and us) after he returned to heaven.  This presence of God is called Paracletos in Greek, which is “one called alongside to help”.  He is also described in other Scriptures as a comforter, encourager, counselor, and advocate (a word which combines both comfort and counsel).  Isn’t this exactly what we want from those around us?  Wouldn’t we be more joyful if someone would do these things for us on a regular basis?  This is the Christmas gift that we have been given – so joy shouldn’t be all that hard to come by.

But properly based joy – joy that comes from the presence of God with us – doesn’t look the same as happiness.  The best way I can describe it is like this: happiness is on the surface, but joy is deep within us.  That’s because happiness is based on surface things, but joy is based on God’s presence in us.  I’m not always happy, but I should be able to always rejoice.  When Paul tells us to rejoice all the time, he wants us to learn how to focus on God and allow the joy that is inside us to reach the surface where others can see it.  This will result in all of our emotions and feelings being informed and influenced by the lasting joy that we already have because God is with us. 

Joy doesn’t come and go, because God doesn’t come and go.  As long as God is with us (forever!), joy is also with us.  This Christmas, let’s allow everything else that we think brings us joy to take a back seat to the real source of joy by celebrating “God with us”.  Let’s not forget that, more than 2,000 years later, the Lord is still near.  Have a joy-filled Christmas!