that's all it is.
It's just so easy to do.
"There's no freedom in the things that you have if they're not being used for the kingdom of God. If they're not being used to draw people to this amazing love that we feel, and we feel obligated to share..." Brandt Russo
It's so easy to idolize stuff, material possessions, clothing, cars, couches, televisions, music, pillows, paint, houses, shoes...
It's all around us.
So few people have renounced this idol, we think that they are the abnormal ones.
And yet we feel strangely moved by the way they have chosen to live their lives, when lived for the glory of God, without material possessions in the way.
I see it all the time.
I see it in my own life.
I see it in the way I think I need to look for work.
I see it in churches.
I see it in A LOT of churches. Big churches. Churches and leaders that I respect.
What good is my stuff, the things that I purchase, if not being used to draw people to this love, to show people this love that I know?
Idols. Idols.
God has been working on my heart over the past... several years, and especially the past several months.
Idols.
Material possessions.
Sure I wanna look cute, but is cute going to get me into the kingdom of heaven? Is it going to get anyone else into the kingdom of heaven?
Freely i have been given, and freely I need to give.
I cannot give freely when I am bound by the material possessions that I desire
because my desire is not to give freely, but to give with limitations-
"you can have what's left after this..."
I'm a worship leader. My worship is no good if not manifest in my life.
I'm a worship leader. My worship is no good if not manifest in my life.
It has not been so and I hate it.
What good are the songs we sing in worship if our worship is not manifest in the lives of the people around us- the hungry, the poor, the needy, the broken, the widowed, the oppressed?
What good? What... good. None. I have done no good. I want to do good. I want to worship God. I want to love God, I want to love his people.
Amos 5:22-26
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. AWAY with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god- which you made for yourselves.
Amos 5:22-26
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. Though you bring choice fellowship offerings, I will have no regard for them. AWAY with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream! Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the desert, O house of Israel? You have lifted up the shrine of your king, the pedestal of your idols, the star of your god- which you made for yourselves.
LB
from Gk. [eidolon] "appearance," later "mental image, apparition, phantom," also "material image, statue," from [eidos] "form"
ReplyDeletefor me, material possessions are the densest form of it. I struggled for a great while trying to separate out this concept of an idol, and what I was to do with it in relationship to my living for God (I dislike using that title personally, but for the sake of common ground, i am sure we are referring to the same thing). being homeless, I already had very little possessions, and there was even a moment where I woke up the morning after discovering that I had lice and had to sacrifice my year+ locks, that my entire backpack had been stolen, and all that I possessed were the clothes on my back. and so what I am left with are my ideas, and my actions. and my choice was (not out of despair, that mindstate in itself is desirous and misleading) to sit, to walk, to eat, to sleep, and to constantly just be aware of this ever-present, all-pervading Being, and learn and become like it simply through watching the synchronistic connections in the change, over time, of my life, others' lives, the life of events, and the life of my ideas.
i agree that is a good idea to rid yourself of dense idolatry. to lose all connection to form, however, is too chaotic for life to exist. but to lift up an ideal/idol of possibility to test it's accuracy, or to test it's benefit along the path toward God, knowing full well what it is, and that you will willingly let go and sacrifice it back to God, is a better mindstate.
i struggle with it in my situation. i willingly suffer for financial benefit, willingly separate myself from my union with the divine, for finances, for resources and location in the future so that I may enter an even greater divine union. but i know it, i can see it, and awareness of it sets it apart from the blind worship of desire.
this is matt, by the way