What Do We Really Value?

Someone close to me, shared this article with me…and I highly recommend it, it is tough to read….but so, so challenging:

http://www.hopeingod.org/sermon/keep-yourselves-idols-part-2

After reading the article, my heart is convicted on many levels…this is what really stood out to me (especially what is underlined):

In his sermon titled “Soul Idolatry Excludes Men Out of Heaven,” English Puritan Pastor David Clarkson (1621-1686) gives us thirteen pointers I’ll draw from to help us identify the idols of our hearts and I will frame them as questions.[5]

1. What do you most highly value?
2. What do you think about by default?
3. What is your hightest goal?
4. To what or whom are you most commited?
5. Who or what do you love the most?
6. Who or what do you trust or depend upon the most?
7. Who or what do you fear the most?
8. Who or what do you hope in and hope for most?
9. Who or what do you desire the most? Or, what desire makes you most angry or makes you despair when it is not satisfied?
10. Who or what do you most delight in, your greatest joy and treasure?
11. Who or what captures your greatest zeal?
12. To whom or for what are you most thankful?
13. For whom or what great purpose do you work?

Tim Keller, when speaking to pastors, explained how the world needs to hear this kind of language from Christianity in diagnosing the sin of the world. He says,

Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry… Instead of telling them they are sinning because they are sleeping with their girlfriends or boyfriends, I tell them they are sinning because they are looking to their careers and romances to save them, to give them everything that they should be looking for in God. This idolatry leads to drivenness, addictions, sever anxiety, obsessiveness, envy of others and resentment. (Keller, “Talking About Idolatry in a Postmodern Age,” Gospel Coalition).

As I think about those 13 questions and Tim Keller’s words, I realize that I have learned to “idolize” some of the blessings that we have been entrusted with. Our family, our house, our traditions, clothes, memories, etc.  My thought-life is often over crowded with thoughts about how we “ought to live” or “what we don’t have” and other concerns that really have no eternal barring  what-so-ever.

I have recently been encountered with many sleepless nights when I feel like I can’t turn my brain off or wake up as a consequence of a bad dream.  I lay awake wondering what the future holds,  where we will live, what our family will look like, etc. I humbly and transparently admit that this isn’t God’s best for me…His will isn’t for us to allow the temporal to drive us, but instead for the eternal to be our ultimate driving purpose.

Some good thoughts to chew on…

Keep on.

Be blessed.

p.s. The high in our neck of the wood is only 88 degrees today and it is raining outside as I type! To celebrate…I chose to wear a light weight sweater and pants today….come on fall, we couldn’t be more ready for your arrival!