Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Come, everyone who is thirsty, come to the water; and you without silver, come, buy, and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without silver and without cost! Why do you spend silver on what is not food, and your wages on what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and you will enjoy the choicest of foods. Pay attention and come to me; listen, so that you will live. Isaiah 55:1-3a
Who Or What Do You Adore?
In his sermon this past Sunday Pastor Jim preached about the holiness of God. He said that we will worship what we adore. If we are not adoring God we will not see his holiness and then we miss out on everything he has for us – until we get that straightened out.
The next morning after this sermon, the devotional I listen to every morning by The Worship Initiative was on this song – One Pure and Holy Passion. It is a perfect follow up to the sermon.
Give me one pure and holy passion
Give me one magnificent obsession
Give me one glorious ambition for my life
To know and follow hard after you.
To know and follow hard after you
To grow as your disciple in your truth
This world is empty pale and poor
Compared to knowing you my Lord
Lead me on and I will run after you
This song says it so simply – it is only Jesus, nothing else. As much as we strive in our lives and as hard as we work to accumulate the “treasures” this world offers, it is all in vain. It all goes away in the blink of an eye and is worth nothing.
As Isaiah says in the scripture above, the most important thing you could ever need or want is absolutely free. It satisfies our deepest longings and quenches the fiercest thirst as nothing else will. Why is it that we incessantly pour money, time, ourselves, and effort into what will never satisfy us? Because Satan satisfies a tiny little itch with false gratification that only drives us to seek more until we reach the end of it all – the end of ourselves, the end of resources, the end of relationships, the end of our career, the end of the end. These are idols in our lives that we are putting in place of God.
God gives us so much more that what idols can offer. Idols can never meet our needs but only multiply them. God gives us sustenance and satisfaction like nothing else can. Isaiah says to listen carefully. We must stay focused, giving our time, attention, and effort to all God has for us. We consume his goodness and find delight and abundance. His offer is grace and clinging to idols forfeits his grace in our lives.
When we are filled with him there is no room in our lives for idols or things that don’t matter. There is no room for earthly treasures that decay and rot away our soul. There is only room for him and all the good things he gives.
When was the last time you really took a close look at your heart and what you are adoring? We often tuck “small” idols into the corners of our hearts, thinking they can stay because they won’t interfere with our devotion to God but how wrong we are. No matter how small we think they are, idols always interfere with our devotion to God. The only pure and holy passion we can have is Jesus. The only magnificent obsession we can have is Jesus. The only truly glorious ambition for our lives is knowing and following hard after him.
What is your passion? What is your obsession? Your ambition?
What are you following hard after?
Know that when we examine our hearts and recognize idolatry he forgives when we turn back to him and repent. There is no room for two on the throne of our heart. Choose God as the object of your adoration and follow hard after him.
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call to him while he is near. Let the wicked one abandon his way and the sinful one his thoughts; let him return to the Lord, so he may have compassion on him, and to our God, for he will freely forgive. Isaiah 55:6-7
