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“Daddy, even my stuffed animals?”
Devotional Thought of the Day:
17 As Jesus was starting out on his way to Jerusalem, a man came running up to him, knelt down, and asked, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus asked. “Only God is truly good. 19 But to answer your question, you know the commandments: ‘You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely. You must not cheat anyone. Honor your father and mother.’” 20 “Teacher,” the man replied, “I’ve obeyed all these commandments since I was young.” 21 Looking at the man, Jesus felt genuine love for him. “There is still one thing you haven’t done,” he told him. “Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” 22 At this the man’s face fell, and he went away very sad, for he had many possessions. Mark 10:17-22 (NLT)
11 When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish, he will be satisfied. And because of his experience, my righteous servant will make it possible for many to be counted righteous, for he will bear all their sins. Isaiah 53:11 (NLT)
299 If there is sacrifice when you sow Love, you will also reap Love.
The other night my 7 year old son and I were doing our devotions and came to the reading above. It was a defining moment for him I think. As we talked about the rich young man, I asked my son what he would be asked to sell.
He thought for a moment, and tears began to fall from his eyes, as he included his beloved stuffed animals, his “friends”.
Three of them, “brown bear”, “blue bear” and “galoshes” have been with him since the day he was born. Others he’s picked up along the way. He even asked me to teach him microsoft access, so he could create his own database to record all of them, nearly 100 at this point in time.
They are his treasures, what makes him quite rich in his mind. They are even more important to him than his electronics, for those are fun, these friends thought, provide great comfort, and a sense of peace.
But he quickly, even through the tears, realized God was worth more to him than his stuffed friends. Through the tears, and yet with a smile showing as well he said he would choose Jesus over his friends. We talked about what idols are, and how things like riches got in the way of the rich young ruler’s relationship with God – given a choice he took them over walking with Jesus.
As a father, I couldn’t be more proud, and as a pastor the same thing is true, I am quite proud of a seven year old, who could process this concept, that the God who he cannot physically see is far more important that what He counts on in life.
I wonder about my own life, would I be as quick to decide to give up what hinders my life from God? Would the people I pastor? Can we find the strength to walk away, even with tears, and yet a smile breaking forth as we realize the glory that God has called us into, to be His kids? Could we commit to giving up what brings us comfort and peace? Can we give up the things that we run to when the world is too rough?
it is the lesson of Christ as well, who sacrificed for the love He had for us, and for the Father..To bring together that which was separated by sin. In the end, the satisfaction is far greater than any scar, any suffering, and sacrifice.
Can we learn a lesson from a seven year old, and treasure the Lord who sees us as His treasure?
Lord, have mercy upon us, and give us the faith of a child!
Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). The Forge (Kindle Locations 1219-1220). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Where Do You Run to? Where Do You Find Hope?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
16 This is why the fulfillment of God’s promise depends entirely on trusting God and his way, and then simply embracing him and what he does. God’s promise arrives as pure gift. That’s the only way everyone can be sure to get in on it, those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them. For Abraham is father of us all. He is not our racial father—that’s reading the story backwards. He is our faith father. Romans 4:16 (MSG)
What does it mean to have a god? or, what is God? Answer: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. (1)
We live in a world full of stress, full of anxiety, full of brokenness.
There is a blessing from this, well sort of, in a round about way.
The blessing is that it is often quite easy to realize when we have set up false idols, when we have set God aside
You see, the more stress we deal with, the more anxiety snares us, the more we deal with brokenness, the more false gods, and the idols we create are revealed.
it may be that are false gods are the the demons of distraction. The distraction helps us escape or even ignore the problems, they create the illusion of refuge. For some, this is drugs or alcohol; for others, it seems less dangerous – television or computers or listening to music or even books. We run to them and hide in them, they become our refuge, our place away from the world and its trauma. With the exception of the drugs, these things can be nice hobbies, but when we find ourselves spending to much time with them, and that is only the times when we are stressed, there may be an issue
It maybe that our idols, are false gods are a poor imitation of Christianity, the kind of thing where we control God, and we put our hope in cliche’s, not in the actual promises of God.
It maybe our false idols are our political and economic system, or in nationalism/patriotism. That everything will be okay because we are Americans, or Canadians, or (insert country name here) and God is always going to take our side. This is often more subtle, but it also overlooks the sins of a nation that allows for abortion, that in many ways would redefine life and family, and which would rather see vengence than reconciliation or mercy. This while insisting we are always in the right, well, except for our politicians.
Simply put, idols today aren’t crafted of wood or stone or precious emeralds or ivory. But they are idols none the less. We turn to them and try to find hope, or relief from them.
There are other idols, especially the one that is a simple plaint capital letter: I. We try to fix life ourselves, we ponder what can be done, we rely first and primarily on ourselves, as our culture teaches us. We go to the altar of self for refuge, for sanctuary, and we reveal that we only trust in ourselves, and we even know that is probably going to fail.
Luther is right on when he describes what “makes” a god or idol in our lives. It is where we go to in those times where we should trust in God’s promises, that He is in charge, that He will work it out, and it will turn into a blessing. We fail to hear what Mary did at the annunciation, that we are filled with grace, that the Lord is with us.
That He who is our God becomes OUR God when we trust Him, when we embrace and hold on to Him for dear life, because His promises will make us whole. When we realize that it is, and has been all along to be our God, for us to be His people, His children, the one He pledges to take care of and love. When the idols of our life fade away, as we realize the promises God has made to us in our baptism. When God becomes our refuge our strength, to whom we turn when life is broken and stressed.
When He is our first option, our first action is to turn to Him, not any other idol, not any other false god.
It’s tough – but it is also why God starts in the first commandment, not with us, but with Him. You see it starts with this….
“I, the LORD (actually His Name – YWHW) am your God, who brought you out of slavery……”
There is our hope at work, His action…. trust Him my friends, and know you can pray for the Spirit to help you when you are too weak too…
(1) The Large Catechism of Martin Luther.
Our Toughest Challenge… and how to defeat it.
Devotional thought of the day:
3 “Worship no god but me. 4 “Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth. 5 Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the LORD your God and I tolerate no rivals. Exodus 20:3-5 (TEV)
What does it mean to have a god? or, what is God? Answer: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. (1)
426 Once you were pessimistic, hesitant and apathetic. Now you are completely transformed: you feel courageous, optimistic and self-confident, because you have made up your mind, at last, to rely on God alone.(2)
If there is one thing we as human beings excel at, it is creating idols. There are idols carved to resemble every living thing, with perhaps the exception of cockroaches. Not sure anyone has made an idol of them. We make idols of our dreams, either our dreams for our own lives, or for our children or even grandchildren. We can make an idol out of health, or beauty or the right career path.
As Martin Luther describes above – it is whatever we look to for good and whatever we turn to we we are distressed, it is where we go when life is shaky and we just don’t have a clue, no way to persevere. It’s what can keep us away from church on Sunday – football, our kids sports leagues, our patrying on Saturday nights, even our jobs.
Life has a way of stripping those idols from us, for they let us down. They cannot sustain us, because and idol is simply something we’ve created, not something that created us.
Yet on we go… creating idols to help us deal wih the fact that our old idols fail us, that our lives don’t change, that getting that car, or that home, or that new computer, really didn’t change anything. No wonder philosophers and mystics appreciate spartan simplicity. The less you have, perhaps the less you have to make an idol? Doubt it, because we can even make an idol out of the most impoverished situation, the most unpleasant selffulfilling matyrdom.
And even as we create more and more idols, even as we chase after this or that, we miss freedom.
The freedom that comes from knowing Jesus, the God whom we didn’t have to create, because through Him we are created. The God who died on the cross for us, nailed our idolatry there as well… We are free from it, free to interact with the God who is real, the God who has come to us.
The God who wil care for us.
(1) The Large Catechism of Martin Luther
(2) Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). Furrow (Kindle Locations 1905-1907). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Why our Idolatry is Worthless
Devotional/Discussion thought of the day:
(From Today’s Adult Bible Study – Special thanks to J!)
•3 “Worship no god but me. 4 “Do not make for yourselves images of anything in heaven or on earth or in the water under the earth. 5 Do not bow down to any idol or worship it, because I am the LORD your God and I tolerate no rivals. I bring punishment on those who hate me and on their descendants down to the third and fourth generation. 6 But I show my love to thousands of generations of those who love me and obey (keep/treasure) my laws. Exodus 20:3-6 (TEV)
Presently in our Sunday morning adult Bible study we are looking at the way we worship. The theme is The Dance of the Liturgy, Learning to Partner in Life with God. We are now in the third class – and we were talking about the Choreography of our lives – and focusing on Eph 5:21-24 and Ex. 20. The basic questions were, “Who leads”, “Why do we try to lead”, and “the Steps of our Life – the Decalogue/Ten Commandments. It may be the best study I have ever written and is quite fun. I have the blessing of growing up with parents who were master Ballroom Dance instructors, so I have a few stories…that illustrate things well.
As we got to the first commandment, after talking about the necessity of trusting our Partner as He leads us through life, one of the newer ladies to our congregation spoke up and said something that too me a couple of minutes to process.
“Pastor, the reason we shouldn’t worship and idols is because they cannot lead us through life.”
What a brilliant observation – these idols – whether they are celebrities, or statues, whether they are numbers ( like back accounts) or liquids (alcohol ) or anything else – will fail us. An idol is this – it is what you turn to, when life is stressful, what you trust to get you through the hard times what you credit for the blessings. Often, the idol is ourselves – we think we are God. It doesn’t matter who we create as our “gods”, our “idols” they will fail for the reason mentioned – they can’t lead us, they can’t create out of our missteps something beautiful, and graceful and loving.
They cannot do what Paul instructs men to do, following the example of Christ,
25 Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave his life for it. 26 He did this to dedicate the church to God by his word, after making it clean by washing it in water, 27 in order to present the church to himself in all its beauty—pure and faultless, without spot or wrinkle or any other imperfection. Ephesians 5:25-27 (TEV)
That’s something an idol can’t do – it can’t lead you on the dance floor, or through the dance of life, or even through the dance of the liturgy……
Only God can…. so relax, know the hands that hold you, realized that He created the dance, and He will assure its completion and its beauty….
Related articles
- The Dance of the Liturgy, Learning to Partner with God (justifiedandsinner.com)
- Hungry for more than Discipleless Christianity (justifiedandsinner.com)
There is no other God!
“There is no other god…”
Deuteronomy 32:36–39
† In Jesus Name †
May we realize that, if there is only one God, then it is to Him we should listen, as He reveals His love and grace to us, and assures us, that He has us in the palm of His hand.
How I don’t want to be part of the crowd…
Holy Week… a time of betrayals…
The Crowds praising God, for bringing the Messiah into their midst… in a few days, the crowds would be crying out to crucify the very person they praised the Father for sending.
The brothers James and John, arguing about who is first in the Kingdom, even to the point their mom would ask Jesus if He could separate them – by placing one at his right hand – and the other at His left. This they asked of the one who would kneel and wash their feet….
The kiss of Judas, how that must of hurt the One who came to embrace the sins of the world.
The sinner of sinners, Peter. Who though he walked with Jesus over three years, though he trusted him enough to set a record for walking on water. Who was at the mountain of transfiguration, who did and saw so many things at Christ’s side… would betray Jesus three times – in Jesus’ hearing, even as Jesus told Peter he would.
Boy do I understand Peter’s grieving, his tears this year. For I find – that as much as I don’t want to be part of the crowd that can go from doing right to doing wrong in an instant, I too often find myself doing so, sometimes faster than I can realize it. My instinct is to find an excuse, a logical reason for sin, to explain the intent – even knowing that the result does not legitimize the sin. We do all sorts of strange things when we sin – we deny the sin, we attempt to bargain, we get angry – maybe to the point where we crucify ourselves, or sometimes, perhaps worse – we attempt to crucify those who point out our error.
If we are blessed, as I have been – we have brothers who have walked that way before, and are ready to share with us, the very grace of God. To remind us that we are forgiven, when we confess the sins we’ve committed. They remind us – that even in our weakest most broken points, that God is faithful, that He is with us. Our reading from Deuteronomy explained it this way, Yahweh will see his people righted, he will take pity on his servants. And 39 See now that I, I am he, and beside me there is no other god. It is I who deal death and life; when I have struck, it is I who heal and no one can rescue anyone from me.
There are those days… when I would wish to escape from God, that I need to hear such words. Then as I realize the love behind them, they bring peace to one who struggles, partially because, like many of you, at times I am my own biggest idol.
Idols – fact and failure.
An idol is something we depend on, something we rely on, instead of relying on God. It can be anything from a good luck charm, to a person we desperately “need” in our lives, to the old fashioned idols made of wood or stone.
And as I mentioned – sometimes we are so impressed with our knowledge or our maturity, that we can become our own idol. We think we have all the knowledge, all the wisdom, all the power. We might even make ourselves an idol of ourselves because we are good Christians, just as Paul realized that he did last week – when we heard of all the things he counted as skubala as dung, because He realized He couldn’t rely on them.
Fact is, when we aren’t on guard – idols have a sneaky way of worming themselves into our lives, making us depend on them, more than we depend on God.
Then they fail – as God tells us they will. It doesn’t matter how much we work, how much we prepare, how much we tell ourselves we’ve got it down- our idols will fail – they will not provide us shelter, or comfort, or help.
There is only one God – the Lord who revealed himself to Abraham, to Moses, to Gideon as we saw during Lent. The God who waits – knowing that our idols, our false gods will fail us….
Ready to pick us up – ready to reveal again, that He is the Lord, that He is with us.
Death than Life.
As the deacons and vicars sat in my office this week – they came to an immediate realization about very 39, the difficult phrases they make us wonder at first glance. It is I who deal death and life; when I have struck, it is I who heal! They both remarked – this is talking about Law and Gospel – about the cross and baptism.
It is one of those moments where I realize that working with them is a great joy! They nailed it. ( Hmmm that might not be just the right way to say it, with Good Friday around the corner. ) But this passage is about this week – about a death that leads to life – and about how we are joined to that death in our baptism.
A death that shows the passion, the very heart of God, that He has for us….
That our sin, that even our idolatry can and is cleansed from us. Not that we should be proud of it, but we shouldn’t nail ourselves to the cross over and over again.
We’ve been there – because we’ve been here – at the baptismal font, at the place of St. Paul said,
12 For when you were baptized, you were buried with Christ, and in baptism you were also raised with Christ through your faith in the active power of God, who raised him from death. 13 You were at one time spiritually dead because of your sins and because you were Gentiles without the Law. But God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; Colossians 2:12-13 (TEV)
That is where our confidence needs to be, not in ourselves, not in the failures that we so grieve over, but in the God who will not let us escape His grasp.
For there – when we realize He will not let us go… we find the peace that so eludes us, when we realized we cried Hosanna – hoping that God would do what we thought was right, the peace that eludes us as well, when we realize we are crying out “Crucify Him”, and then grieve over our guilt.
He won’t let us go, and because of that – we can know He is God, and that He crucifies us in Christ – that we can be raised to a new life. A life in which He reigns, and in which we live in peace. AMEN?
The Lord is With Us…removing our idols!
Realizing and Revealing…
The Lord is With Us
Removing our Idols
† IHS †
As you experience and know the grace, mercy and peace of living in God’s presence, may the idols you cling to, that weigh you down, simply fall aside..
Can you imagine the Sanctus, sang by people of every tribe, every language, every ethnicity, as they pour into the space around the throne of God? As we seem Him in all of His glory?
As we hear the people of God, all in awe of our Father’s appearance and of His glory. Can we our voices added to theirs as we all sing Holy! Holy! Holy! with such awe that almost sucks the breath out of us, combined with a joy that goes beyond anything that we could ever imagine?
Our attention will be so focused on the Lord God Almighty, that I doubt we will notice the other parts of the scene, the 4 seraphim, the 24 elders, and though we will move and sing as one being – I think all of our attention will focus on the love of our lives, our Father…. The Son, the Holy Spirit….
Everything else, all the things of the world… will have ceased to exist, they won’t matter.
Including our idols,
including our idolatry.
The Idols fall away…
That is the lesson tonight! As we look at Gideon’s walk with God, we consider this Lenten journey – what it means. We realize how it changes our lives to accompany Christ on His walk to His cross. As He bears the punishment we deserve, if only because of the number of times we have shattered the 1st “commandment”,
Because I am the Lord your God, who rescued you, you shall have no other gods… you will not make or worship idols.
Far too often, our lives resemble that of Israel. Imagine – as people walk up to the front door of your house, there is a monument to your favorite idol, to the thing that you most often put in God’s place, the things or people or achievements that we spend most of our time either working for, or enjoying, or chasing after.
Rarely are we as simplistic as Gideon’s dad was, just placing our idol, or an altar to that idol in our front yard. We may be more sophisticated in how we chase them, of how we pursue them, but they are idols none the less. We may even be as blunt and transparent in how we chase after these things – at least in the view of others, or if we look at how we spend our money, our time, our thoughts, and who or what we turn to, as we deal with a crisis.
What is it that binds us, that ties us up, that stops us from being with God?
The thing about idols that I don’t think we understand – is that if you have an idol, you don’t own it – it owns you. That’s the thing about gods, if they are a god, not only do we depend on them, we are entrusted to them – we become their property. We find ourselves to connected to them to break the connection, to dependent on them for our success, our ability to deal with, usually by ignoring it, the aspects of life that cause us anxiety. We become addicted to them, and knowing its wrong struggle to find a way to break free.
That is why we are like Gideon’s father, who finds himself, a child of God, one who could well remember God’s reign over Israel; the proud owner of a home with the community altar to Ba’al. An altar to worship the god of fertility. Are we, like Gideon’s father, willing to make a stand, only after they are removed?
How can we overcome our attraction – even our addiction to those idols we have? That is the part of our quest for lent, to rid ourselves of the things which stop us from realizing and revealing that the Lord is with us!
The Secret to Ridding ourselves of Idols.
I began this devotional message talking about our being in the presence of God, as we dwell in His presence before His throne, for a reason.
The only way to break the power of something over us, is to have something more powerful grab ahold of our attention, of our focus, of our very lives.
Remember – those idols wouldn’t stand a chance of attracting your attention, when you dwell in the presence of Almighty God, as are gathered in His presence around the throne of God. We joke about you can’t take it all with you, but the real truth is that you wouldn’t want to!
You would look pretty silly, in the presence of God, illuminated by and dwelling in his glory, to be lugging a bag full of false gods, or to be bowing before things you have made yourself, or that others made. It wouldn’t be just silly, it could be even considered pathetic, sad, something that would bring us to tears. Even as we talked about on Sunday, as Paul would cry and wail as he had to share that some people chose to be enemies of Christ, and the cross where our lives were linked with His.
The cure for idolatry is simple – it’s to realize we live, we dwell in the presence of God. TO remember that doesn’t just happen when we go home to be in the Father’s presence, but we now dwell, fully, in the presence of God – the Holy Spirit.
It is found as we gather together, in Christ’s presence, as we worship Him, as we hear that we are freed from our sins, and from all of the world’s unrighteousness and injustice. As we pray, as we spend time in scripture – both devotional reading and studying it together, as we come to the altar, and celebrate the foretaste of our homecoming feast – the feast of the lamb. It is found, as we realize and reveal to others, the Lord is With Us!
There is no idol that stands in the presence of God!
Gideon, dwelling in the presence of God, hearing God’s desire, did what we are called to do, and did away the idols that bound the people of Israel.….
Free not just of idolatry, but of every sin… for we dwell in the presence of God…
For we dwell in His peace. AMEN?
