Posts Tagged ‘idols’

God has been revealing hidden idols to me lately.  Very hidden ones that serve to hold me captive.  And what I’m learning is that when I have a high view of something other than God, I have a smaller view of God.  God is all about God. He is jealous, deserving of all glory and the highest possible praise.  He deserves our making much of him at all times.  He’ll take us to extreme and radical experiences as His children in order that we view our hearts and expel any idols there.

God took Gideon to a place where he would have to examine his view of God.  (See Judges 7).  He reduced the army he served and led from 32,000 men to 300 men to fight against an uncountable number of men.  (Kind of like Lord of the Rings stuff.)  God did this intentionally so that Gideon and his men would not be able to have a high view of themselves, rather, that they would give all the credit, glory, honor, and power to the LORD.  God was jealous for his people to make much of Him, not the other way around.  We’re prone to this kind of idolatry, and God will do extreme things to help rid us of those idols.

Look at these X-Ray QuestionsDavid Powlison, from his book, Seeing with New Eyes (pg. 132-40) and begin to investigate how God is lovingly leading you through certain times in your life to expel the idols Satan attacks you with.

xray questions

Dig Deeper RiverStone!

Chris.

Hard interpretation of Gideon’s fears yesterday in Judges 6.  This story really gets me.  It’s hard to decipher and thank God we have the Holy Spirit to teach us difficult truths.  One thing I did love about the story of Gideon’s journey towards freedom is that he as a fearful dude!

Do you consider yourself fearful?  What are some major fears you have?  Snakes is one of my greatest fears.  I’m a girl when it comes to snakes.  My wife makes me look bad.  I once tried to run over a snake in our Explorer instead of chopping it’s head off, and almost hit the house with the vehicle due to incredible fear.

But one good thing that Gideon teaches us is how God responds to our fear when we take it to God with a seriousness and heart for obedience to him in the face of fear.   We learned that Faith isn’t the absence of fear…rather it’s action in the face of fear.  So…if you’re fearful about following God with something in your life he’s leading you towards.  Join the party!  Couple of insights on what to do with fear:

1. Talk to God in the middle of your fear. We see Gideon not running from God as Jonah did, rather he was talking to God the entire time of his fear – See Judges 6
2. Take your fear to God with a submitted heart – Gideon had a heart that was saying, this assignment is so big God, and if you are not leading me to do this, I want to know.  Please show me and I’ll follow through.
3. Make a costly sacrifice demonstrating an obedient heart – Gideon gave a young goat and and ephah of flour.  That was expensive stuff at the time, because food was scarce in Manasseh.  But he desired to hear from God so badly, that he was willing to give up these things in order to have God speak into his fear.  What can we do that’s costly?  Pray a bunch.  Fast.  Do community with other believers.  Be willing to wait on God for answers that he’ll reveal in his timing.
4. Look back at God’s clear revelation of himself in order to Identify and Tear down any idols you may be trusting in - Gideon was led by God to immediately tear down the Baal idols and the Asherah idols.  He forsook what he grew up with.  He went against the people of his town, and even his family’s idols.  He was willing to do the hard work while fearful.  But he let his recollection of what God did in his life propel him towards faithfulness.

What about you?  What are you doing with fear?  Take your fear to God.  Talk to him.  Let him speak into it.  It’s OK to go to God with hesitation as long as you’re going there with a heart to follow hard after him.

Dig Deeper.

PC

What a day yesterday was for me as we studied Psalm 121 together.  I didn’t get half-way through it in the message, because the first 3 verses are absolutely amazing.

We ran across a man who had an important decision to make – really, THE foundational decision of his life.  We see ourselves wrapped up in this man, as well.

Who was this man in Psalm 121?  We don’t know.  He didn’t include his name as he penned the Psalm.  But what we do know about him is that he is a man who is in need of help of some sort.  Protection?  Security?  Financial? Relational?  Spiritual?  Physical?  We just don’t know what he was up against in his life, but we do konw that he was up against something.  And he wrote a Psalm about it.

What decision did this man need to make?  Here’s where this man lived.  He lived between a choice to make in his need for help.  ”I lift up my eyes to the hills – where does my help come from?  My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”  Who would he choose to turn to for help? In what would he base his need for help?  Where would he turn?

He chooses to turn to the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.  This is the most important decision he made in his life up until this point, more important than who he marries, what job he takes, or anything else.  And it’s the most important decision we’ll ever make.  Who will we turn to in our times of need for help?

We have 2 options:

1. We can turn to idols
2. We can turn to God

I want to give us some handles this week to investigate how we know if we’re turning to idols.  ”An idol is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”  (Tim Keller, Counterfeit Gods).

Today, ask yourself  this question as we go “idol hunting:”  “What do you enjoy daydreaming about?  What occupies your mind when you have nothing else to think about?  Archbishop William Temple once said, ‘Your religion is what you do with your solitude.’  In other words, the true god of your heart is what your thoughts effortlessly go to when there is nothing else demanding your attention.” (Keller, Counterfeit Gods).

Dig Deeper and let God illuminate any idols and break those idols!

PC

Hey RiverStone and Friends,

We covered a bunch in our time of worship yesterday at RS!  Can you believe we walked through basically 1 Samuel through Isaiah 9?  It’s my prayer that as we took the important time to see this Biblical Story, that you see the backdrop of the greatness of the child that we celebrate on Christmas…the Christ-child!  I have had many people expressing thanksgiving to our worship service for leading them to a greater understanding of this Christmas celebration.

So let’s dig a bit deeper in our study this week: we saw to begin with yesterday people of God were not governed by a president, a queen, a king, an emperor, a king or any other sovereign from Genesis through 1 Samuel 7.  God was their sovereign…We come to 1 Samuel 8 and what we see is the people of God were scared for their future because the judges God was using to help facilitate life and right living as His people were not going to be good news…so what did they do?  Pray?  Nope.  Plead with God?  Nope.  They asked for a king instead…Basically what they were saying was, “We don’t want you to govern us anymore God…we want a king like all the other nations.”  Bottom Line – they rejected God as their king.  Imagine this – the people of God rejected God as king.  Why would they do that?  What would motivate them to reject the creator God for a created being?  Fear.  They couldn’t predict God, see God, and would trust God to lead them.  Don’t knock ‘em too hard, we do the same thing…

So God allows them to put their trust in a human king instead of the King of kings and watch what happens:

• Saul anointed King…Saul fails as King
• David anointed King…David fails as King
• Solomon anointed King…Solomon fails as King – do we see a pattern here?

Let’s ask ourselves some questions from Solomon’s life as king…

• How did Solomon’s kingship start out?  See 1 Kings 3:1-14
• What did God tell Solomon to abstain from?  See 1 Kings 9:1-7
• Why would God tell Solomon to abstain from this?  See Deuteronomy 7:1-4
• What did Solomon choose to do?  Stay faithful to God or strive forward in rebellion?  See 1 Kings 11:1-6

Let’s ask ourselves one question to consider:

• Are we worshiping God alone or are we trusting in other gods?  Who is worthy of our worship?

We’ll continue throughout this week to walk towards Isaiah 9 together, looking at why the child being promised to be born to us is such good news!

PC