Where do you yearn to spend most of your free time? Time that is left after your fulltime job, household chores and family time are all done? The place where you yearn to spend your free time, that place is your God. The thing you most yearn to do after your work is done, that thing is your God.
Do you desire first to sink into your sofa, turn on your TV and binge watch your favorite type of entertainment? Then entertainment is your God. If you easily spend five hours watching TV and five minutes with God, then TV is your God.
Do you believe that you own your free time, or do you think God owns it? Do you want God to own it? Will you let Him own it?
To say to God “I surrender all” but to keep your “me time” for yourself is to not surrender at all.
To offer worship to God that costs you nothing, is no worship at all.
Is your God in a physical box or in a time box where you visit Him like a creature in a zoo, spend some time in fascination and then go back to prioritizing what the only god you serve, “me”, wants? If so, do not fool yourself. You are offering lip service with no real connection to God.
Doing godly activities like listening to songs, hymns, preachers on radio, TV or in-person gatherings, habitual rituals or recitations but doing any of these instead of spending one on one time with God is like merely satisfying your god quota for the day. Do not fool yourself, are you doing this to truly spend time with God or from a sense of duty or obligation like paying a tax or checking off an item to keep yourself above the line in His good books?
If you are attending spiritual gatherings listening to the singing, dancing, teaching in the same way you sit down to be entertained by performers, then you are fooling yourself. Entertainment is still your God. This is deadly entertainment because it looks clean and holy and makes you feel warm, fuzzy and spiritual but are you even one step closer in your relationship to God? Spiritual and religious activities are the deadliest idols in fostering deception. Only you and God know if there is any real longing for God’s presence in you.
Jesus said that if you do not take the idols of your heart (such as entertainment, food, pleasures, projects, or whatever it is you yearn to do first with your free time – for these are the things that stand as ‘idols’ between God and you), nail them to the cross (symbolic place where all sin was put to death), carry your cross daily (the hard fight against temptations that keep you away from God) and follow after Him; then you are not really His disciples. If you are not daily prioritizing your body and flesh behind the Spirit then you are stagnating. Whatever spiritual activities you do are not going to move you forward in your walk. If you optimize for gaining the most from your earthly life you will lose your eternal, spiritual life.
This struggle is daily, it is constant like trudging up a mountain. You have to daily fight the gravity, carry your lot and keep moving until you summit. We like to settle in our comfort zone, God nudges us to keep moving upwards and onwards.
If any of these thoughts make you uncomfortable, it is good. Take it to Jesus in prayer. As you spend time with Him and in His word, He will change you. He knows us more intimately than any person ever could and is able to give our lives purpose and meaning unlike any other. This purpose and meaning will not become known to you until you spend the time one on one with Him. The enemy of your soul wants to keep you away from achieving God’s purpose for you, from living the fullest life you can live in Him. So, he puts in your way myriad idols that woo the senses, the mind, body and have the potential to waste away your life without ever meeting God’s best for you. He calls us to walk on water. It is non-intuitive and unnatural to walk on water and we do not have the ability to do it. Yet if we spend time with Him, drawing close to Him, drinking water that He gives and consuming the bread of life which He is, we will be able to do impossible things.
Check yourself, who is really your God. Whatever rides you, that is your God.
Do you desire first to sink into your sofa, turn on your TV and binge watch your favorite type of entertainment? Then entertainment is your God. If you easily spend five hours watching TV and five minutes with God, then TV is your God.
Do you believe that you own your free time, or do you think God owns it? Do you want God to own it? Will you let Him own it?
To say to God “I surrender all” but to keep your “me time” for yourself is to not surrender at all.
To offer worship to God that costs you nothing, is no worship at all.
Is your God in a physical box or in a time box where you visit Him like a creature in a zoo, spend some time in fascination and then go back to prioritizing what the only god you serve, “me”, wants? If so, do not fool yourself. You are offering lip service with no real connection to God.
Doing godly activities like listening to songs, hymns, preachers on radio, TV or in-person gatherings, habitual rituals or recitations but doing any of these instead of spending one on one time with God is like merely satisfying your god quota for the day. Do not fool yourself, are you doing this to truly spend time with God or from a sense of duty or obligation like paying a tax or checking off an item to keep yourself above the line in His good books?
If you are attending spiritual gatherings listening to the singing, dancing, teaching in the same way you sit down to be entertained by performers, then you are fooling yourself. Entertainment is still your God. This is deadly entertainment because it looks clean and holy and makes you feel warm, fuzzy and spiritual but are you even one step closer in your relationship to God? Spiritual and religious activities are the deadliest idols in fostering deception. Only you and God know if there is any real longing for God’s presence in you.
Jesus said that if you do not take the idols of your heart (such as entertainment, food, pleasures, projects, or whatever it is you yearn to do first with your free time – for these are the things that stand as ‘idols’ between God and you), nail them to the cross (symbolic place where all sin was put to death), carry your cross daily (the hard fight against temptations that keep you away from God) and follow after Him; then you are not really His disciples. If you are not daily prioritizing your body and flesh behind the Spirit then you are stagnating. Whatever spiritual activities you do are not going to move you forward in your walk. If you optimize for gaining the most from your earthly life you will lose your eternal, spiritual life.
This struggle is daily, it is constant like trudging up a mountain. You have to daily fight the gravity, carry your lot and keep moving until you summit. We like to settle in our comfort zone, God nudges us to keep moving upwards and onwards.
If any of these thoughts make you uncomfortable, it is good. Take it to Jesus in prayer. As you spend time with Him and in His word, He will change you. He knows us more intimately than any person ever could and is able to give our lives purpose and meaning unlike any other. This purpose and meaning will not become known to you until you spend the time one on one with Him. The enemy of your soul wants to keep you away from achieving God’s purpose for you, from living the fullest life you can live in Him. So, he puts in your way myriad idols that woo the senses, the mind, body and have the potential to waste away your life without ever meeting God’s best for you. He calls us to walk on water. It is non-intuitive and unnatural to walk on water and we do not have the ability to do it. Yet if we spend time with Him, drawing close to Him, drinking water that He gives and consuming the bread of life which He is, we will be able to do impossible things.
Check yourself, who is really your God. Whatever rides you, that is your God.
Then he (Jesus) said to them all: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. - Luke 9:23, Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34
For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. - Paul's letter to the believers in Galatia, Galatians 5:17
Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. - Paul's letter to the believers in Rome, Romans 8:5
For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. - Paul's letter to the believers in Rome, Romans 8:14
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