relationships

by

Idolizing the Ideal and Idealizing Idols


If I discover within myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. CS Lewis

John Calvin stated in the Institutes that man’s heart is an idol factory. We spend our lives setting people, places, things, goals, jobs, whatever, on the pedestal of our hearts. We give them our time, our loyalty, our money and control of our actions and attitudes.

We then expect our idols to meet our needs. People should love us unconditionally, meet our every need and never fail us. Jobs should fulfill us and allow us to reach our financial goals. Homes should make us happy. Social circles should fill our every free moment. Food should comfort without creating unhealthy bodies. Because we have given these people or things our worship, we expect them to be worthy of our worship. We expect our gods to behave like God.

For a while that may occur. The person showers you with a rush of love and affection and attention. The job launches you into an adrenaline high and maybe even a new tax bracket. The friends are fun and make you feel like the life of the party. The smaller jeans make you feel confident. The extra helping of dinner or desert makes you feel comforted.

But then one day the person fails you. The job gets tough. The friends aren’t there in the hard time like they were in the good. The jeans get tight. The food doesn’t fill the hole in your heart. The idol doesn’t fulfill your expectation of meeting your need perfectly. So you work to get more of it. Surely more of a good thing is better, right? It doesn’t take long on the idol cycle to learn that no person, place or thing can stay on your pedestal without a lot of help from you. It takes a lot of excusing, overlooking and enabling to keep an idol in a place of worship. It takes a lot of work to keep an idol worthy of a position of worship.

Too bad we miss the fact that the God of the universe, the one our hearts were made to crave, does not need our help in the least to stay on that pedestal of worship. The Perfect One is worthy of our worship all on His own. We have no need of idealizing the Ideal.

When we place our focus of worship on the One True Object of worship, it frees us up to worship Him with reckless abandon. When we aren’t using our hands to tightly hold onto our idol, they are free to be raised in worship. When we aren’t using our mind to rationalize the pain and heartache caused by our idol, we are free to think well of Him and worship Him with our minds. When we aren’t spending our time chasing after relationships and things that are never fulfilling, we can spend our time drinking deeply from the well that never runs dry.

I find myself spending a lot of time and effort idealizing things I believe I am lacking. Keeping idols worthy of worship is exhausting. It’s unfair to place those expectations on those we place on our pedestals and unrealistic for any object. When I return my focus to what I have been given, I see that my true object of worship has supplied my every need in Christ Jesus. There is no need for multitasking when God alone is the object of our worship.

Worshiping God is easier because we do not have to work to idealize our object of worship. He is ideal in and of Himself, freeing us up to simply worship.

What idols are you exhausting yourself attempting to idealize? How can you free up your heart and mind to simply idolize the ideal instead of attempting to idealize your idols?

by

All Alone?


It’s not often that I go looking for inspiration in 90’s Christian rap music. Ok, I don’t think it’s ever actually happened. But when you put the iPod on shuffle, you just never know what’s going fill your ears. This is what I got this morning from GRITS:

A servant of God must stand so…so very much alone that he never realizes he is alone. In the early stages of Christian life disappointments will come, people who used to be lights will flicker out, and those who used to stand with us will turn away. We have to get so used to it that we will not even realize we are standing alone. Paul said, “No one stood with me, but all forsook me…but the Lord stood with me and strengthened me.” We must build our faith, not on fading lights, but on the light that never fails. When important individuals go away we are sad until we see that they are meant to go. ‘Til there’s only one thing left for us to do: to look at the face of God for ourselves.

It’s from their 1999 album Grammatical Revolution. And it got me thinking. What do we do when we get to those points in life in which it feels like we have been completely abandoned?

Sounds like the Apostle Paul knew what that was like. Not too many people are willing to stick around when their ministry’s leader is in jail.

Paul understood abandonment.

Jesus knew what abandonment was like. He was abandoned on the cross, bearing the burden of our sin. Not too many people are willing to stick around when their leader is being executed.

Jesus understood abandonment.

There are times when we are abandoned by all the people we know. Whether by choice or by circumstance, we find that those we tend to lean on in hard times are unavailable. When we physically lean and the thing we expect to be there is not, gravity tends to drag us to the ground. The same thing can happen if we rely on people, things, habits, places to catch our fall in hard times.

That’s what I love about the reminder in that last line of “Count Bass D (A Reading From)”: …we are sad until we see that they are meant to go. ‘Til there’s only one thing left for us to do: to look at the face of God for ourselves.

Often when we look for support, encouragement, backup in the battle, we look to our right and to our left only. We want our fellow soldiers by our side, and when we find them missing, we are confused, hurt.

But in those times, we must remember the promise given in Isaiah 52:12: For you shall not go out in haste, and you shall not go in flight, for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard.

We are never alone. It may seem that we are fighting the battle alone because we feel we have little or no human support. But we have a God outside of time that goes before us, straightening and smoothing our path while still standing behind us, guarding our back in the heat of battle.

David Crowder Band sings “Only You”, a song written from the perspective of realizing and appreciating the experience of learning that He is all we need in the heat of battle:

Take my heart, I lay it down
At the feet of You who’s crowned
And take my life, I’m letting go
I lift it up, to You who’s throned

Chorus
And I will worship you, Lord
Only You, Lord
And I will bow down before You
Only You, Lord

Take my fret, take my fear
All I have I’m leaving here
Be all my hopes, be all my dreams
Be all my delights, be my everything

And it’s just You and me here now
Only You and me here now

You should see the view
When it’s only You

Have you ever seen the view, when it’s just you and the Lord? Or do you crowd your view with people, places, things? God has recently stripped some false supports from my life and shown me that, while painful, the result is beautiful– the opportunity to see Him and only Him.

Try it sometime; the view is spectacular.

by

His Love is Better


Psalm 63
1 O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory.
3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.
4 So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands.
5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips,
6 when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
7 for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy.
8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

Read closely the words of David. Take note of the words above that are in bold.

If you didn’t know that David was talking about his desperate desire to know God, you could think that he was describing his praise and adoration of an absent lover. Many modern love songs use similar words and phrases to describe our attempts to have this type of need met by another human being.

But David declares that HIS steadfast love is better than life. Better than life.
Did you catch that? Think about your life. Think about your strongest love, whether familial, platonic or romantic.

Think about your most loyal friend. He is more loyal.

Think about your most caring parent. He cares for you more faithfully.

Think about your most affectionate relative. He embraces you in an eternal love.

Think about your most passionate lover. He loves you more passionately and sacrificially.

David says His love is better than all that. And David would know. He was half of one of the most loyal friendships recorded in history. He experienced passionate lovers. He was adored by shouting fans. He was the king of a nation. He had it all! Yet he still said that the love of the Father was better than all of that.

Do you doubt Him? Have you ever given him the chance to prove His love to you? I’m not asking if you’ve gone to church or practiced religion; the church is made of people and no person or group of people will meet the need we all have in the depth of our souls to know and be known. Have you ever taken Jesus up on his offer of steadfast love that is better than life? Or are you so enamored with the creation that you have missed the infinite love and satisfaction found only in the Creator?

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” CS Lewis, The Weight of Glory

by

Who is my Neighbor?


This summer I’m adjusting to the self-controlled schedule of online classes. I’m taking Introduction to Evangelism. I know, I’m taking an intro. class my last semester of seminary. To share with you a moment of honest transparency and confession, I put it off until the last minute, praying they might change the core curriculum for my degree program. Alas, they did not and, in the words of that well-known singer/theologian, Garth Brooks, “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayers.”

This class has reminded me of the need to urgently and intentionally share the good news of Jesus Christ with the lost and dying world that surrounds me all of the time. While living in Seminary World I sinfully and selfishly fooled myself into believing that we lived in such a gospel-saturated area that my sharing would only annoy the people around me. I went to three continents in three years to share the Gospel, but never walked across the street to do so. But God even uses our disobedience and fear for His glory. In His perfect timing, I avoided taking Evangelism until I was back in the “Real World” and was forced to once again face head-on the vast lostness present right here in the Bible Belt of America.

While I was watching Doc Reid lecture this morning, he made a statement that I’m sure I’ve heard before, but it resonated in my heart as it shattered my last remaining excuses for not intentionally sharing my faith. His words were simple: “Play to your strengths.” He was discussing the differences between relationship and lifestyle evangelism. For some of us, the idea of going door-to-door, cold calling people or striking up a conversation with the person in line behind us at the store with the intention of sharing the Gospel brings up images of panic attacks and faking illness to avoid the situation. We are not outgoing people with salesman personalities, and the idea of “selling” the Gospel to a complete stranger makes my head explode.

I am much more likely to develop a relationship with someone, get to know them, share my life with them and then, after a connection has been established, confront them with the Gospel. That works for me and my personality and how I live my life. The problem is that when most of us think of evangelism, we only think of visitation with the deacons from church on Tuesday nights. That limited thinking stymies our desire to share our faith.

While Dr. Reid did encourage us to play to our strengths, he also challenged us to develop our weaknesses. I don’t naturally share my faith with strangers, but I also can’t tell you what part of the Christian life comes to me naturally. Naturally I’m selfish and self-centered and a host of other ailments and sinful tendencies. Just like I have to die to self and discipline my fleshly nature in the battle against sin, I must also die to self and discipline myself to practice evangelism. Consider the alternative: I can die to myself for a few moments and risk the possibility of rejection and ridicule before I go along with my day in relative ease. Or I can choose to love myself and my comfort more than that lost soul, essentially telling them that my personal comfort means more to me than their eternal destiny.

So in an attempt to find ways to be more intentional with those I do not know, I began to pray that God would show me things I can do to create opportunities to connect with the lost around me. Connecting with those around us is the key to being able to share the Gospel with them. How do you connect with your neighbors? According to Jesus, who is our neighbor? That’s right, the guy next door AND the lady standing in line behind us at the grocery store and and the Muslim woman in Afghanistan and the gay guy that works in the cubicle next to you and the single mom on welfare shopping next to you at Wal-Mart and everyone in between. Who is your neighbor? Anyone who comes across your path. The common denominator is the image of God found in every human being. Osama bin Laden and your BFF are equally your neighbor when discussing who you should care for in light of the Gospel.

In an answer to my prayer from earlier this morning, Reformissionary blogger Steve McCoy posted some fun and practical ideas on connecting with those around you in a blog entitled Summerbia:Connection Tools. Check it out, then grab a tennis ball and some kids and head to a local park and have some fun and share your faith. It’s guaranteed to be an evening you won’t soon forget.

by

Polyamory:The Next Sexual Revolution?


If this is the type of sexual confusion facing people living in Seattle, then Mark Driscoll needs to make his series on the Song of Solomon available to every household in the city. Many people have spent months blasting Mark’s series as being too blatant, too disrespectful, too graphic;I’d like to see some of those pastors counsel someone in a “polyamorous” relationship and see how far they get…

Read the article from Newsweek here.