I am going to let you into my process for this blog: faith, obedience, and excellence. I move in faith and obedience to what God is instructing me to do, and I do it to the best of my ability. Therefore, if God does not tell me to do it, I do not do it. A few days ago, I posted Are You Clingy?. It was a post that God gave to me in December of 2019 but He had not released me to share it. While I was preparing myself to hear the Word on Sunday, He told me to post it. I rushed to the computer, read it one more time, and then posted it before service started.
If you read Are You Clingy?, you know that it addresses what we set up in our lives alongside God that are idols. Today, while I was in my Bible study time, I read 2 Chronicles 25. King Amaziah of Judah defeated the Edomites by the power of God. Then, a shocking and heartbreaking thing happens in verse 14, Now it was so, after Amaziah came from the slaughter of the Edomites, that he brought the gods of the people of Seir, set them up to be his gods, and bowed down before them and burned incense to them. King Amaziah set up someone else’s gods to be his gods.
I felt that pressing in my spirit that God wanted me to write about this. I immediately thought about how people take on other people’s bad habits and addictions and it becomes an idol in their own lives. God said, ‘No. People are constructing their own ideas of Me that have become idols to them.’ God is the true and living God. However, He is being defined differently than how He reveals Himself through His Word.
He explained to me that we call ourselves Christians but it is for the wrong reasons. We have taken on His name because that is what our parents did. We go to the same church because it is our family’s church. We think that we are saved because we attend service every Sunday. We enter the church and stand when we are told to stand, sing when we are told to sing, and sit when we are told to sit. We feel good and covered for the week because we made it to Sunday service. We have taken on other people’s doctrine and ideas of who God is. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away (2 Timothy 3:5-KJV).
What we are really worshipping are traditions, religion, the church building, our parent’s God, the pastor’s God, or our own ideas of what God requires from us. While your parents, pastor, and friends may be worshipping the Living God, unless He becomes your Lord, you are worshipping something other than Him. We have set up our own gods. Therefore the Lord said: “Inasmuch as these people draw near with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but have removed their hearts far from Me, and their fear toward Me is taught by the commandment of men (Isaiah 29:13).
In the Book of Luke, Jesus’ words are recorded. Then He said to them all, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me… And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple (Luke 9:23 & 14:27). Are you willing to deny yourself of what is comfortable and familiar to follow Jesus? Can He tell you to leave the church that your grandfather was a founding member of? Are you ready to build a relationship with who He is and not hinge onto your mother’s relationship with Him?
The best way to know if Jesus is truly the Lord of our lives is found in Luke 6:46. But why do you call Me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do the things which I say?. If Jesus does not guide your life, then He is not your Lord. I do not want us to be deceived and distracted by all of the good things that we are doing in His name. Those good things are just idols outside of a Lord/servant relationship with Him. Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name? ’And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’(Matthew 7:21-23)
For more on identifying and eliminating idols in your life, read Are You Clingy?.
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Copyright 2020 T.L. Lockley. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
