Final part:

Here’s another part of what I have been meditating on, in which is also an iniquity of the heart and that is idol worship! Idol worship seem to happen very subtle In our hearts! And we usually don’t realize how bad it is. Our perception of true spiritual reality gets twisted by our idols. Our view of life gets distorted by our idols, it’s like we usually make things bigger than what they really are or, like putting certain things on the pedestal.
Have you noticed usually the things we really desire and really want are the things we idolize, we worship things in our hearts by being so consumed with them. And so what happens our heart gets distorted, we usually attach pleasure to what we want or desire, and then we usually attach pain when we don’t get what we want or desire. It’s so easily to fall into hopeless despair and depression when things in life don’t go your way or when you don’t get what you want. So because we put so much emphasis on what we really desire, that thing we are desiring we are putting on the pedestal, and we end up making ourselves believe we can’t be happy without it, or as if it’s the end of the world if we don’t have what we want. So because we usually worship the things we desire, those idols have our needs behind them, because there is something we are trying to satisfy ourselves in by the pursuit of that idol.
So we are making that idol our god to provide a need for us. It can be an emotional need to comfort our pain, or a physical need to provide food, drink or nice things. We can make an idol of anything to comfort us or give us strength or satisfaction. Our idols causes us to fear and worry, because we put self expectations on our idols to meet a need. Our idols put pressure and stress on us, causing us to believe that we can’t live without the thing we think we want, or desire. So we get stressed out and filled with anxiety when our needs are not met and when we can’t get what we want or when things don’t go our way. Because our idols are false gods and we are worshiping created things, our idols were meant to fail us.
Another horrible thing that happens, is when the things we desire in life doesn’t go our way, God tends to get the blame for it. We blame God when our needs are not met, and circumstances seem to fail us. How is this so? We blame God for not meeting our needs when we were worshiping idols false gods in our hearts? So we blame God for not being there for us, when we didn’t trust in Him in the first place ? But rather trusting in our idols and wanting God to honor our idols and things we desire? But we don’t want to honor him above our idols ? But we don’t want his will above our own will ? But we worship the created things we so much so that God has no real place in our hearts compared to the things we truly want and desire.
So let’s stop blaming God, he had never failed us, our idols failed us, we didn’t trust in Him but our idols. It was our ignorance to worship Idols. Gods number command is to have no idols before Him, so we must not blame God for not being there for us when we chose to disobey and rebel against Him. So we must think carefully about our idols! What has your heart been consumed with, that you have been dreaming about and fantasizing about more than God ? What have we been worshiping inside of us, more than God ? What have we been putting above God’s kingdom, or above His will ? What are things that we are looking to to satisfy or fulfill our needs in? It could be ourselves, we rely on our own methods and strength in order to satisfy ourselves that is, self idol worship, or it can be other people who we have relationships with, we are looking towards others to satisfy us, putting our self expectations on them to meet our needs, so we dream about what we think they should be doing to meet our needs, and when we they don’t fit that picture or expectation we get hurt.
All of our disappointments in life can be traced back to self expectations, where our idols come from. God has never hurt us or failed us, our idols did, but we have blamed God for a lot things that happened, because we selfishly expect God to be our genie in the bottle in our life to provide for us, without having A relationship with Him where we are not worshiping idols and rebelling against His commands. We need to repent for blaming God in any way, where bad things has happened to us, or where didn’t understand why things were happening to us, or when things didn’t go our way. God let’s us have our idols and let’s our minds get depraved and broken by them, so that we see that our idols fail us and never truly satisfy, so that we can turn to Him and look for his healing from our brokenness. Our lives have been broken because of idols, all stress, worry, fears, hopelessness, unbelief, depression, anxiety, and death are the result of worshiping idols because it’s the rebellion against the living God, when we cut ourselves off from the living God who gives abundant life, we perish and will die! We reap what we sow by the law of sin and death.
God wants us to have the fullness of life, peace, joy, love and the rivers of living water. Worshiping idols is building our own cistern, broken cisterns that can’t hold any water, only by the grace of God from Jesus Christ can we come to God, but we must allow him to deal with our hearts, we must submit our hearts to Him, so he can remove our idols by our surrender, we can’t save ourselves from our idols, we are slaves to idolatry, it’s so easy for us to do, to worship the things we desire, so we have to surrender and lay our hearts down, and let him build in us the well spring of eternal life, He wants to be our God and our provider, our lover and life giver, He will give us peace and hope for the future. We don’t have to worship idols, created temporary things of this world, we don’t have to crave for things of this world, our God is living and alive, and knows what we need, He is the Almighty God, who can do anything! He doesn’t want us to bow down to idols, and He won’t bow down to our idols, He wants us to bow down to Him and worship Him as the Living God.
And also the church can be an idol to us, the ministry can be an idol to us, human leaders in the church can be idols, because the root is still around our self expectations to try to draw comfort or strength by going to a church group, or relying on the pastor or leaders, it’s very easy to idol other human beings who are leaders, or people we look up to in dependency to fulfill a need. I don’t think people at shepherds has realize their idol worship of msn John and how people are being molded in the image of msn John, and not even Christ likeness. And even so msn John has placed Himself to be a mediator, to be a god like figure to his members, who makes all the decisions for everyone there, He is not being Christ like, rather he is taking the place of Christ being a mediator between the members and God. They fear him like God, more than God, because they are being molded into msn John image and not Christ image. They also idolize the ministry, fishing and teaching others the bible, is more important than not having any idols before God. So how can one establish a real connection from the heart, when their hearts are being consumed with ministry, and trying to do the work of God, when they are rebelling against the first command to have no idols. And the system they have in place makes you worship the ministry and msn John who is the leader of the system.
If msn John was true [in accordance to the bible], He wouldn’t worship the ministry and the mission life, He would say, that having no idols before God is the true heart of worship, having a pure heart and a clean conscience that can only come by the blood of Christ. But he doesn’t truly exalt the power of blood, but the ministry, and trying not to sin. Msn John does mentions about making sacrifices to God, and denying yourself, but the truth is, it’s for the ministry, for the mission, He believes if you give up your life for the mission, then it is for God, but that is still idol worship of the ministry, trying to gain Gods favor and blessing by the self centered pursuit of doing good works, to save yourself from judgment and for eternal life. It’s still a self idolatry pursuit, but religious and covered in good works. Let’s no be deceived our surely only hope of being saved from our idols is Jesus dying on the cross, his blood shed, and our only place where we can be sure to have a right relationship with God is through His blood alone.
ChrisÂ