Letting go

A couple of months ago, God put it on my heart to pray that He would reveal idols in my life, so that He could remove them. I had NO idea how intense a prayer I was praying!

A week or two later, there were three weeks IN A ROW where the speaker at Reality LA mentioned idolatry and explained it in a way that stabbed at my heart in a different (yet equally severe) way each time. Who knew I had so many things that I wasn't willing to let go of?

I mean, it's fairly easy, after a while, to recognize "obvious" idols- money, prestige, (both heavily tied to) career, etc.

But it gets trickier when it becomes things like social status/popularity in spiritual communities, talents, even spiritual gifts! Or aesthetic things like the beauty of nature, gorgeous music, God-given talent in sport/dance/performance, etc. Like most other idols, these are not, in and of themselves, bad things. In fact, a lot of them are things given to us by God to help us worship Him better. But it can actually be sneaky and turn into the very thing we worship. YIKES.

When you're getting ready to leave a state you've lived in for 17 years, and are coming face to face with leaving behind just about everything, you really start to see what things you hold on to too tightly... and I've been discovering that these "security blankets", these things I say that "I can't live without", are IDOLS. All I truly need, is God. And He is a jealous God- He doesn't like there being anything other than Him at the center of my life. Because, really, if I'm saying that I NEED other things, that I can't live without them, that it would hurt too much to lose them, I'm basically saying they are part of my life source, my GOD. No bueno.

It's a really freeing experience, but boy does it hurt! I'm just glad my God is a God who cares deeply for me and walks right beside me/ahead of me leading me as I go through these experiences, comforting me, healing me, filling the holes left by the idols, and satisfying and fulfilling me in ways that nothing else could ever even attempt to pretend to act like they could.

When God commanded in the Ten Commandments to not have any idols, I know that a big part of it was because He is God and refuses to have His people worship anything else... but I also thing that a big part of it was that He KNEW how much idols were hazardous to our health, and becausee He KNEW just how good it would be for us to be wholly given over to Him.

"You shall have NO other gods before Me."