Wednesday, September 9, 2020
Now
to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before
the presence of His glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior through
Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time
and now and forever. Amen. Jude 1:24-25
The Only
God
Idolatry.
Bowing down. Worship. Seeking peace and fulfillment. What is it that you go to?
Where do you seek peace and fulfillment? Many of us say we go to God for these
things, while we stuff our houses, closets, garages, and bellies with more than
we could need in a lifetime. We don’t even notice it, yet we bow down, and we worship,
and we seek from every shiny place in this life besides Him.
Idolatry
is not just loving something more than we love God. Idolatry is replacing God in
our life with something that He has actually made. Everything that exists comes
from Him, therefore He made everything, and everything that we have comes from
Him. When we seek fulfillment and
happiness from something other than God, we are expecting it to do for us what
only God can do.
Often, we
go to idols to escape the reality of our lives. We are seeking distraction,
oblivion, or just a mild sedative to the things in life we want to be delivered
from. We want to forget what we cannot escape. The irony is that idols offer
false deliverance that turns into another form of bondage. Make no mistake, our
help comes from the Lord. When we try to solve problems on our own and when we
seek deliverance from somewhere else but the Lord, we will not find true
deliverance. We will find a false security from an idol that demands our soul
in return. Our God is the true deliverer.
Idols also
offer only lies under a façade of truth. They are deceiving and draw us
in before we know it. God offers only truth. He never lies to us. He also has done so much more for us than any
earthly idol could ever do. Jackie Hill Perry, in the Bible study on Jude that
she wrote, points out all that the only God
does for us:
- Forgiven
us – Acts 10:43
- Made
us conquerors: Romans 8:37
- Given
us access to the Father: Ephesians 2:18
- Strengthened
us: Philippians 4:13
- Taught
us to praise: Hebrews 13:15
- Has
given us life: 1 John 4:9
- Has
given us victory: 1 Corinthians 15:57
- Provided
comfort: 2 Corinthians 1:5
- Made
us able to offer acceptable sacrifices: 1
Peter 2:5
- Made
us able to draw near to God: Hebrews 7:25
- Has given
us salvation: John 3:17
Let’s face
it, we don’t stop to think about all He has done for us when we want a quick
fix to a deep pain. We either go to our Heavenly Father and trust Him to
fulfill our longings and our empty places, or we let these longings become
desires that Satan can use to lead us away from God. He will gladly fill our
empty places, although we will find ourselves emptier than ever before. God
will fill these empty places and give us so much more than we ever desired. Only
He can provide the true and lasting fulfillment we seek.
