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| Notes | 209 |
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
Chapter One
Idol Chatter
The art of pressing flowers is as relevant today as it was
one hundred years ago.--Martha Stewart
If I tell something, promise won't laugh? I love Martha Stewart . From her edible flower salads to her monogrammed garden work gloves, I love her. Everything she does exceeds any superlative my puny mortal brain could devise. She's ... otherworldly. She's stare-with-your-mouth-open astounding. She makes life-size gingerbread doghouses and grows her own potatoes. She does everything with perfection.
She makes her own marshmallows.
I go about my day wondering WWMD? (What would Martha do?). My ears perk up when I hear her name. My face lights up when I speak about her. I love her magazine; I love her television show. I even love her This-is-how- I -make-a-bed video that plays nonstop in the linen section of Kmart. ("All Martha, all the time.") It's a good thing, you know.
My family thinks I'm obsessed, but I'm not . I'm simply ... pursuing all I can about the art of domesticity. On the other hand, maybe my family is right.
You see, like you, my heart has a need to worship. It's what I was created for. I know God is the One who deserves my worship, and I want to worship only him, but there's a problem. Something always seems to come along to entice me, to grab my attention and steal my affection. There's a tug of war inside me, pulling me in a million directions, away from God and toward other, lesser things. If it's not Martha Stewart, it's e-mail or Mel Gibson. It's Rush Limbaugh, the newest dollar store, or my must-have bowl of Frosted Flakes in the afternoon. The Bible calls such things "idols." "Worthless idols."
I don't know about you, but I'm not too crazy about the idea of idolatry, especially if that idolatry is mine. I don't like to think of myself as an idolater. Idol worshipers are ancient pagans who sacrifice virgins and bow down to statues. They conduct rituals until God gets mad and smites them or sends plagues to wipe them out. But that's not me! I'm a suburban, American, church-going, tax-paying, Bible-reading Christian. I don't have any idols ... or do I?
The truth? I do have them--lots of them--if you consider an idol to be any thing, person, place, idea, substance, or activity that I turn to first , before God, for comfort, pleasure, satisfaction, purpose, or meaning in life. It's something that I think I can't live without. You know, like chocolate.
Hand Over the Snickers and No One Will Get Hurt!
I'll never forget the time a friend of mine confronted me during a break at our church's women's retreat. As I madly rifled through my purse for my bag of emergency chocolate (my motto being "You never know when you'll be in a situation without a vending machine nearby") and then bit into a milk-chocolate-covered maple crème, my eyes rolled back from the ecstasy of the chocolate rush. Ahhhhh . It was on my second bite that my friend shook her head in obvious disdain and blurted out, "Nancy, chocolate is your god!"
I laughed, but her words stung. I told her she was wrong. That I could quit anytime I wanted. Then I went back to my room and cried. Sobbed as if someone had taken my dog out back and shot him. Truly there has never been a more pathetic creature than I, clutching my stash of chocolate bliss and letting the tears roll down my face.
Once I had composed myself, I briefly toyed with the notion that just maybe there was a slight possibility that perhaps what my friend had said was somewhat semitruthful. She had accused me of being an idolater . A worshiper of cocoa, fat, and sugar.
Earlier the retreat speaker had asked, "What holds you? What is your greatest passion? What's the first thing you think about when you get up in the morning and the last thing at night? What motivates you? Captures your attention? Grabs your heart?"
I knew the correct answer was, of course, Jesus. But I also knew the honest answer--my honest answer--was not Jesus. At that moment my greatest passion was in a plastic bag inside my purse. It's what I had wanted first .
I squirmed and wiggled as the speaker continued her talk (and I continued thinking about Hershey's Kisses and Whitman's Samplers). Then, of all things, I thought about Jonah and what he had prayed while he was inside the belly of that fish and about worthless idols and forfeited grace. I'd never thought of myself as an idol worshiper before, but that's exactly what my friend had called me.
I wish I could tell you that confrontation was my moment of epiphany, of radical repentance, of falling on my face and "throw[ing] off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles" (Hebrews 12:1). Instead, it was a moment of defensiveness ... and anger.
How dare she tell me chocolate is my god! Who does she think she is? Then my anger turned to fear. What if I had to give it up? I couldn't do it! The agony would be too much for me . I even felt despondent. If I can't eat chocolate, what reason would there be to continue living?
Well, maybe that's being a tad melodramatic. I probably wouldn't die if I couldn't eat chocolate, but I'd be awfully cranky.
I decided right then and there to do what I usually do when confronted with a difficult decision or circumstance. I tried to ignore it, hoping the whole subject of idolatry would go away. Besides, it's such a negative concept. Idol worship is what sinners do.
So you can clearly see why I took offense to my friend's words and why I tried to push the whole subject out of my mind. But you know how God is. (Or if you don't, I'll tell you: When he wants to reveal something in your life, he's as relentlessly persistent as a teenage daughter who wants a tattoo.)
I don't remember exactly how it happened, but God did what God does best. Just when I thought I'd found a loophole ("Idolatry is something ancient Bible characters were guilty of, and besides, I'm under grace"), I remembered that God is still God and still says he'll have no other gods before him. That includes chocolate. Now, I'm not saying chocolate is bad or it's a sin to eat or enjoy it. However, if I feel I must carry around a bag of it in case of an emergency, there's a problem.
As I said, I don't remember how it happened. If I'd had a lightning-bolt experience where you shout "Hallelujah!" and gather up all the chocolate you have stashed, set it on fire, and never eat another tasty morsel again, I would've remembered. But I think I just repented. Acknowledged that chocolate was too important in my life. That I turned to it before I turned to my Father. That I needed to know him better.
As it is, I still eat chocolate, but I don't carry around an emergency stash anymore. Something has changed inside. Now before you start thinking I've conquered the area of idolatry in my life, be assured that I have not. But I'm learning, s-l-o-w-l-y, that the sweetness I've sought in chocolate (and so many other things) can only be found in the sweetness of God's love.
Grace Forfeiters
If your experience of life is anything like mine, something is always trying to lure you away from the grace of God. Not from his saving grace, but from the experience of it, the walking in the knowledge of his pleasure. These so-called worthless idols grab your affection and tell you lies. They promise love and power, comfort and pleasure, but fail to deliver. Before you realize that, however, you willingly "forfeit the grace that could be yours" and end up feeling emptier than before.
What has you forfeiting your grace? What holds you? Captures your attention and your heart? Has you bound up and yearning to be free?
Tim Keller, Bible teacher and pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, offers this test for identifying idols in your life. In his study of Galatians he asks: Is there something too important to you? Is there a person, experience, possession, position, relationship, etc. that if you can't have it, you get (excessively) angry, fearful, badly worried, or despondent?
• If you are angry, ask yourself: What is it that I think I have to have that I'm being blocked from obtaining or achieving?
• If you are fearful or worried: What is it that I think I have to have that I feel is being threatened?
• If you are feeling despondent: What is it that I think I have to have that I've either lost or failed at?
As for me, I'm not generally prone to anger and I'm almost never despondent. I am, however, often fearful. I'm afraid that one day we won't be able to pay our bills and the bank will repossess our house. (I'm held by the need for security.) I'm afraid that if I don't do something--anything--nothing good will happen, and everyone I love will make wrong decisions and destroy themselves and me along with them. Or at least make me cry. (I'm held by the need to control.)
The need for approval and acceptance also holds my heart. I'm afraid of standing alone for Christ when everyone around me, even family members, ridicules my beliefs. I'm afraid of people who talk behind other people's backs. Afraid that if I'm too odd they'll talk behind mine. I'm terrified of making unpopular parental decisions.
I'm also afraid to let people close. I keep them at arm's length. (I'm held by the desire for independence and self-reliance.) My daughters always accuse me of "interviewing" people--asking a thousand questions, yet rarely offering anything of myself. I tell myself that I'm trying to be a good listener or that I'm "esteeming others more highly than myself," as the Bible says, but the truth is I'm scared of letting people in.
Martin Luther once said, "Whatever your heart clings to and relies upon, that is your God." Even before that, from inside a fish, Jonah said that the things that hold us, the idols in our lives, are, in essence, grace forfeiters, grace stealers.
I know all about that. A long time ago I almost had God's grace sucked right out of me. Theologically, I know that's not possible. Once God extends his saving grace to a person, he never removes it or snatches it away. We, however, can turn up our noses at it and allow something else to steal away our affection, forfeiting the benefits of his grace. At any rate, I once felt as if all grace was gone from my life.
I'm embarrassed and ashamed to tell you this, but I instigated and participated in a forbidden flirtation with a man who was not my husband. It was all one-sided on my part--I don't think the man had a clue as to my feelings toward him. But God did.
Eventually this other person occupied all my waking thoughts and even my dreams. I felt dirty and yucky, but I couldn't seem to change. The truth is, I didn't want to. So I allowed this worthless idol in my life to continue robbing me of the grace that could've been mine as I clung to it with all my might.
When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It
This is what happens: My clinging to idols becomes reciprocal. I cling to something, hoping it will satisfy whatever it is in me that needs satisfying, and it does ... at first. But then something shifts, and the thing I'm holding on to begins to hold on to me.
In the case of my one-sided love affair, it had me so bound that at times I couldn't even think clearly. Finally the Lord brought me to a fork in the road where I had to make a choice: I could continue clinging to my idol, living a happily-ever-after fantasy existence that displeased God and rendered me useless in his kingdom because of my feelings of guilt and shame, or I could choose freedom.
Friend, this might not sound like a big deal, but it was by far one of the hardest choices I've ever had to make. I'm not telling you this simply as an illustration either; it goes far deeper than that. This was a pivotal experience in my life, a time when I "got it." It being the knowledge of the depth of my sin in comparison to the greatness of God's gift of salvation and the abundant life he offers to his children. I truly, completely, totally understood Jonah's words, "Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs." I'd known what it was to ding and what it was to feel as if God had turned his back on me.
I won't go into details except to tell you I unclenched my fist and made the necessary adjustments in my life to remove myself from the grip of this idol. As I did, it was as if the windows of heaven opened and grace rained down on me. "Free from guilt, his blood has washed [me]," as a favorite hymn says. I still suffered the grief involved with ending a relationship (albeit a one-sided, secret one), but I got my life back.
Then, shortly after that, I went through one of the darkest periods of my life, as if I'd provoked an unseen enemy (which I had). It seemed obedience to God had removed me from Satan's Benign Christians List, and I guess that ticked the enemy off. However, the grace I had once forfeited became my strength, and I vowed never to let anything other than God hold me ever again.
Unfortunately, my vows are as worthless as ... well, as yours are, because it seems every time I turn around I'm flirting with something else. I suspect you're the same way. But God wants to give us grace . He wants us to open our hands in surrender and worship to him and be free. Free to be who we were created to be: much-loved, eternally secure children who worship the one true God.
It all comes down to this: Whom shall I serve, God or myself? Everything that seeks to steal me away from experiencing the freedom of God's grace points to self: my comfort, my image, my reputation, my desire to control other people and my surroundings. The problem is not chocolate; it's the importance I place on the pleasure that chocolate brings. It's not Martha Stewart; it's the idea that if I follow her example, people will adore me, too.
What Part of the Gospel Aren't You Believing?
My friend Cindi has a favorite question. Whenever she sees that I'm flirting with a worthless idol, she asks me a pointed question: "What part of the gospel aren't you believing?" In other words, what aspect of God's nature am I doubting? His unwavering love for me? His willingness to forgive? His ever-sufficient grace? His power, truth, glory, and majesty? To be honest, at times I doubt all the above.
I think it's because secretly I want to be God. Oh, I wouldn't ever come right out and say that out loud. I'd rather die than have you think of me as being that presumptuous and arrogant! But you know what? Sometimes I think I know better than God how my life should go. Besides, he's in his holy heaven somewhere out there taking care of wars and famines and floods and probably could use a break. He might even appreciate my taking over every once in a while.
Plus, I want to help. And be his instrument in answering my own prayers. I want to feel good about the things I do for him. I want him to peer down from his throne and point me out to all the angels and say, "See my servant Nancy? Did you notice the way she faithfully sits on the front row at church each week and dutifully takes notes during her pastor's sermons? Did you see the way she volunteered once for nursery duty and read the entire book of Galatians at one sitting? Did you take note of how she set her timer last week and stayed on her knees praying for twelve whole minutes (without getting up to check her e-mail even when it chimed, `You've got man!')?"
The struggle with idols boils down to this: God is God and I am not. But I want to be. It's the Garden of Eden all over again, when the serpent offered Adam and Eve the opportunity to "be like God" (Genesis 3:5) and they swallowed the lie. Ever since, Eve's sons and daughters have fallen for the same line. But because God is who he is, he has a gospel , literally, "good news." He says to his creation, You're evil through and through. Totally depraved--bad to the bone. But I love you! "I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness" (Jeremiah 31:3).
The catch is, although he loves us, he still requires perfection--and we've already blown it. But because he loves us, he has provided a way for us to be right with him. The Father sent the Son to live the perfect life we never could and then to die the perfect death, both living and dying in our place. Then he rose from death to prove himself almighty. All he requires from us is to humbly repent of our trying to be God, receive his gift of life through frith, and rejoice forever because he takes delight in us and has good things planned for our lives.
Sounds simple if you ask me. Unfortunately, I don't like simple. I want to do something, do my part. It's not enough that God has done it all. The part of me that wants to "help" is still alive and well. I'm still an idolater. I still turn to anything and everything other than God alone.
I still want to be God!
But I'm not. However, the more I get to know him and who he really is, and the more I realize I've done my part by simply being a sinner in need of salvation, and the more I see myself as being even worse than I ever thought possible, the more willing I am to see that his grace is greater than I could ever imagine. The more I know him, the greater is my trust that he does know best and that his love for me is a sure bet. To know him is to love him. To love him is to trust him. To trust him is to find freedom to serve him, not out of a sense of duty, but out of sheer gratitude.
So with the words of the apostle Paul, "I ask the glorious Father and God of our Lord Jesus Christ to give [us] his Spirit. The Spirit will make [us] wise and let [us] understand what it means to know God" (Ephesians 1:17, CEV). Because to know him, as Martha Stewart would say, is a good thing.
A very good thing.
Think on These Things
1. What are some ways people react when they lose something precious or want something they can't have? How do you react?
2. What are some of the false promises and lies of idols? What reasons do people give for not wanting to let go of them?
3. What are some of the idols in your life? Use the following questions to help you identify them:
What is your greatest fear/worry?
What do you turn to first for comfort?
What accomplishment, possession, or relationship makes you feel the greatest sense of self-worth?
What occupies your thinking? Where does your mind wander?
What unanswered prayer might cause you to doubt God to the point of turning away?
On what do you spend the majority of your time, energy, and money?
4. Read Galatians 1:1-10. How can idols in your life be compared to "turning to a different gospel"? What are the elements of the true gospel? (See 1 John 4:9-10; Romans 3:10-18; Romans 4:4-8; Romans 11:5-6; Romans 10:9-10; Romans 8:1-2; Galatians 5:1.)
* * *
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O, take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.
--Robert Robinson, "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing"
Copyright © 2000 Nancy Kennedy. All rights reserved.
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