It has been awhile since I have posted anything. So I feel compelled to post about whatever is on my mind right now. And being as I got back from church recently I shall touch on that. The message was given by Steven and it was very straightforward and hard-hitting. It was over Exodus 20, which contains the 10 commandments. At first I was just like, ok the ten commandments, yeah, what am I going to get out of this. But what really hit me was the second one. You shall not make for yourself an idol. The same for Sunday School. God was clearly accentuating this to me for a reason. What is an idol? It is something I place above God, it is what I spend my time doing. It is what I talk about, spend my money on, and what I think about in the service when I should be paying attention. There are several areas in my life that I haven't given to God, and it is very clear to me now. For example, for me a huge area is my video games. I am a huge gamer, I have spent massive amounts of money on the best consoles, a HD TV, surround sound, the newest games, the best accessories, and so on. I think about the games allot and talk about them with my friends. They occupy a large portion of my free time, it has gotten to where I don't even think of it as free time anymore, it is a couple hours each day that I have to spend playing the games. While playing the game in itself is not wrong, not having a quiet time because I spent hours playing games is. When it has taken priority over my relationship with Christ, that is when it has become an idol. So that is what I got from the message today and that is what I am currently working on.
9/9/07
Idols
It has been awhile since I have posted anything. So I feel compelled to post about whatever is on my mind right now. And being as I got back from church recently I shall touch on that. The message was given by Steven and it was very straightforward and hard-hitting. It was over Exodus 20, which contains the 10 commandments. At first I was just like, ok the ten commandments, yeah, what am I going to get out of this. But what really hit me was the second one. You shall not make for yourself an idol. The same for Sunday School. God was clearly accentuating this to me for a reason. What is an idol? It is something I place above God, it is what I spend my time doing. It is what I talk about, spend my money on, and what I think about in the service when I should be paying attention. There are several areas in my life that I haven't given to God, and it is very clear to me now. For example, for me a huge area is my video games. I am a huge gamer, I have spent massive amounts of money on the best consoles, a HD TV, surround sound, the newest games, the best accessories, and so on. I think about the games allot and talk about them with my friends. They occupy a large portion of my free time, it has gotten to where I don't even think of it as free time anymore, it is a couple hours each day that I have to spend playing the games. While playing the game in itself is not wrong, not having a quiet time because I spent hours playing games is. When it has taken priority over my relationship with Christ, that is when it has become an idol. So that is what I got from the message today and that is what I am currently working on.
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It is easy for us(me) to overlook this issue - the making of idols. Partly because we look at examples of idolatry in the Bible and think, "I don't make or bow down to worship some graven image" - doing those things is rather obvious and blatent idolatry. But when it is explained as Stephen (and now you, Danny) did, it is clear that we do make idols and also worship them with our time and our words. (It's possible I've been spotted bowing on my knees before my Xbox on occassion, but it's out of sheer frustration with Danny and his buddies having relentlessly destroyed me over and over again in some online Halo match - that's called weeping not worship)
But there are so many areas like this where I fail. The Bible tells us that whatever we do in word or deed should be done for His glory - hope nobody is keeping tabs on that one. Or how about, whatever is not of faith is sin - umm, missed it again. The list goes on, but I won't humiliate myself any further. The point is that only by dieing to myself daily and "putting on Christ", can I even come close to living Christ-like. It's from Him living in me.
Some people just make things too understandable sometimes. It's no fun facing my short-comings and then having to make adjustments. :)
Thanks for the thoughts Danny!
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