July 31, 2018

Three ‘gods’ that are Stealing Our Worship

By Kim D’souza

    By Kim D’souza

The Bible mentions that our God is a jealous God (Deu 4: 23,24; Exodus 20:4,5). But His jealousy is exactly the opposite of world’s perception of  jealousy. Worldly jealousy calls for envy, resentment and bitterness. But God’s jealousy speaks of love, concern and protection. God’s jealousy says: You are precious and of great worth to me. And I love you so much that my heart breaks when I see your heart break. My heart grieves to see you settle for something that is not my best.

James 4:5 MSG says : He’s a fiercely jealous lover, and what he gives in love is far better than anything else you’ll find.

That’s why God hates idols.

Now, anything that captures my heart in place of God is an idol. And anything the captures my time, captures my heart!

If we say we love Jesus, but don’t spend time with him, something is wrong. Here are three ‘gods’ we are spending time with most in our 24 hrs.

SLEEP

“How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? (Proverbs 6:9).

I cannot even begin to count how many times I have missed my sweet fellowship with the Holy Spirit because I was too tired and wanted to sleep. We reason, “God understands how tired I am.” Yes, He understands. And that’s why He wants us to spend time with Him so we get renewed in our strength.

The one you give your TIME, is the one you get from!

If we look at the life of Jesus, He was the busiest preacher, always surrounded by people. But He figured out a time to spend with His father when no one could disturb Him. Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray (Mark 1:35 NLT). It is this time that renewed Him and gave Him direction for His day.

Here’s one thing we can strive to do: Rise up early. Flee from the bed. Before the world starts to speak into our ears, let us get up early and surrender our ears to the Lord. Let us master our sleep, and do not let it master us.

FOOD

Bulk of our time goes in eating or in worrying about what we should be cooking or eating. In fact if we are hungry we can’t even think properly and suddenly we find ourselves angry and irritable. This shows how much we have yielded ourselves to the flesh.

It was for food that Esau lost his birthright. It was for food that the Israelites started grumbling soon after they were out from Egypt. “…There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Exodus 16:3).

The Bible says, Man shall not live by bread alone, but a steady stream of words from God’s mouth (Deu 8:3, MSG). I wonder when was the last time we fasted. Many Christians think that we should fast so God can be impressed. But we don’t fast for God; we fast for ourselves. In fasting as we yield our flesh to Him, our spirit man becomes stronger and more sensitive to His spirit. Ironically only the hungry will fast! If Jesus being God, felt a need to fast, how much more should we!

Fasting also brings direction, and prepares us for the battle that lies ahead. The Bible says that after fasting 40 days and 40 nights , Jesus was hungry and the tempter came to him (Matthew 4:2,3). Note, fasting didn’t make Jesus vulnerable for the devil to test him. In fact Jesus prepared for the test by fasting! That’s so enlightening!

PHONE

The third god that consumes majority of your time has to be, hands down – our ‘Phone’.

It has made us so dependent because it caters to most of our needs – call, SMS, camera, video – and even the Bible!

We are so particular to charge our phone daily, but we don’t care when for weeks and months together our spiritual battery is down. We get so upset when our wifi connectivity is lost and we don’t bother about how weak our connection with the Holy Spirit is!

I like how Joyce Meyer puts it: “You are not the most important person in the world.” So you don’t have to check your phone every few minutes. It’s ok to keep your inbox unattended. It’s ok if you don’t get to check your social media to see who is talking about what. It’s ok to leave your phone intentionally when you go out. It’s time we switch off to the world and switch on to God.

Avoid the desire to touch your phone first thing in the morning and last thing in the night. Be intentional about carrying your physical Bible to church and in times of meditation. Delete your games or apps that are making you addicted.

As athletes running in the race to win the prize for which God has called us heavenward in Christ, we need to invest into making good spiritual habits. As they say, “Habits eat willpower for breakfast.”

God has got a great call upon our lives and it’s time we pull down every idol that we have placed on the pedestal of our hearts and get serious with God.

Let me conclude with the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 9: 26

I don’t know about you, but I am running bar for the finish line. I am giving it everything I got. No sloppy living for me! I m staying alert and in top condition. I am not going to get caught napping, telling everyone else all about it and then missing it myself.

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