Don't Get it Twisted

“You shall have no other gods before me.” — Exodus 20:3 (NIV)

We often find time, spend time, and waste time on things that will not benefit us in anyway. Things that will only take away and not add to our character. Things that will tear down what was built on the inside of us because we don't realize that any exaltation whether good or bad takes energy. We publicly and openly acknowledge our personal particulars and privately and quietly acknowledge God within reason. We believe that a Facebook status here and there about his goodness is enough to suffice. We tell ourselves that the bare minimum of giving is enough. We tell ourselves that reading a passage of scripture every once in a while should be enough, we believe that we are doing just enough to get by and that's far from the truth.

Idolatry simply put is placing anything in the place of or before the only true God. In many cultures it's either widely accepted or strongly prohibited. In the body of Christ through the studying of the word of God we see that all throughout the Old Testament God told his servants to tell the people of a God to humble themselves, put the idol gods away, and acknowledge the true God for who he is. Here in the book of Exodus, God was getting the children of Israel ready and preparing them for the fulfillment of a promise that He had made which was to deliver them into a land of abundance once they understood and agreed to a few ground rules that we call the Ten Commandments. In this particular verse, we see that God has addressed the issue of idolatry and  although this is a historic text, don't let the translation fool you, it's just as relevant today.

We're all living lives of worship, but if you're life were to come together on paper, who would your action say that your god is? Could it be that we've not reached the promise land of God's promises in our lives because we don't acknowledge him for who he truly is? We'd rather spend hours on end on Instagram and not even five minutes in the word of God. We can't go twenty minutes without talking to someone on the phone, but we can't give God two minutes of our time, yet we want God's abundance and favor.

We put everything before God. Sometimes our social obligations, other times our personal wants and desires. Sometimes our thirst for attention, other times our personal desire to be physically involved with someone that God has not ordained to be in our lives. It's time to tap into our discipline. We've idolized the idea of a dream relationship to the point that we'd rather get beat up in private, just because of how glamorous our relationship looks in public. We've idolized physical nakedness so much so that we'd pay more for less clothing material because it's the in thing to do. We've idolized social media gods so much so that it's the first things we log on to in the morning and the last thing we log off of at night. We've become lovers of ourselves seeking God for nothing, but elevation, emancipation, and a flashy life full of perfection and flawlessness, but that's not real.

In real life you don't like what you see when you look in the mirror. In real life you're unsure of yourself so you use social media to validate you. In real life papa was a rolling stone so you're not happy, but you want people to think you're happy so you put on this front. You idolize the new thing because being hip and I'm the know is the only way you know to appear unique and unmoved by your current situation because you no longer recognize the voice of God. Yet, our scripture today tells us to have no other god before the one true God and so it's time for us to humble ourselves and get back to the place that we know that we should be. Anything is acceptable in moderation, but we're not living that reality because our lives are off balance. We've turned our backs on God and it's time to do better. It's time to cut the television off for a moment, shut the account down for a minute, cut some people off for a while, get on bended knee, and go to God in prayer that we might hear from heaven and receive God's direction and purpose for our lives.

Let us bow:

Heavenly Father,

We thank you for the grace you've granted us by allowing us to see another day and we thank you for the goodness, and mercy that has met us every step of the way. Father, we've forgotten our purpose because we've forgotten you and we apologize because we know better. We didn't realize that we were spiritually off balance and that we were in need of an extreme spiritual makeover from you Lord, that we might know what it is to put you first and honor you. Lord we've placed value in places that are undeserving and we apologize Lord. We acknowledge you Heavenly Father as the only wise God full of grace and truth. We've invite your Holy Spirit in to take complete control in our lives, clean our spiritual house from the inside out, and restore unto to each of us the joy of our salvation, helping us to understand that the only true validation comes from you. Thank you Lord for everything for we know that if you do nothing else in our lives Lord, you've already done way more than enough. We bless you and we praise you oh Lord our strength and redeemer for it is in your mighty and matchless name we pray, Amen!