Some of us sometimes think that “Idolatry” means someone bowing down to a status and praying to it in a shrine. It’s really easy to dismiss that practice as not even remotely a temptation to us today in our culture and not to discount everything the Bible says about idolatry as being irrelevant to us.
Big mistake! Idolatry was the most offensive sin against God’s people committed against Him in the Old Testament times and it is our most offensive sin against God today too.
“The human heart is an idol factory” John Calvin
I don’t know if you all will believe me on this-but happiness is one of the biggest idols in our culture today.
An idol is anything we put above Christ in our hearts. It is something we worship,are desperate to have , will give anything to try to obtain, will sin in order to get, will give up lots of money and time to pursue, will sacrifice all other relationships for and believe we can’t live without.
If we are desperate for something/ someone, are terrified to go without that thing/ person and are willing to sacrifice anything to have it- and that thing is not Jesus- it is time to do a very deep spiritual evaluation of our motives
Some other idols do come with idol of happiness. As we idolize happiness, it has been my observation that we tend to idolize self, feelings, romance, and control (having our way). This in turn leads to pride, self righteousness, disrespect, resentment, bitterness, jealousy, ungratefulness, discontentment, arguing, gossip, slander, complaining and all kinds of any kind, we tend to trust our own wisdom instead of God.
We tend to focus on ME instead of obedience to God and dying to self. We easily rationalize and justify our own sin in order to get what we want when we want it, if we hurt someone else in the process, oh well……. we need to be happy.
WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MY HAPPINESS?
Sadly, we sometimes idolize our temporary happiness, we also tend to make other people responsible for our emotion and happiness instead of taking responsibility for our emotion. Please ponder on these few question
- What if a man is NOT responsible for my happiness?
- What if each person is responsible for himself/herself emotionally?
- What if my circumstances are a test to see how i will respond and if I will respond without sin?
- What if I am expecting career, money, beauty, fame, health, a wonderful house, a fancy car, being a certain size, a boyfriend, a wedding, marriage, children or something else in this world to meet needs in my life that only Jesus can actually fulfill and satisfy?
We CAN choose to be content as we focus on being thankful to God, focus on the good and the blessing God has given us and allow Christ to empower us.
