I've let myself get a day behind and now I realize that my power cord for my computer has become powerless! Don't you hate it when THAT happens! So my laptop's battery may go dead shortly and I'll be done until I can get back home with a new power supply. (As I write this, I'm feeling it very personally...like maybe it's me that is in need of that power supply...running a little low today! Lord, help me through and give me what I need to do what I need to do!)
Today’s lesson is on counterfeits, and spotting them. I'm sure everyone has heard the story of how FBI agents are trained to spot counterfeit money...by studying in detail real money. Same is true for our relationship with God and with the things that try to steal us away from Him...the more we know of Him and the complete and absolute satisfaction that He brings to our lives, the quicker we will identify the counterfeits that creep into our lives. HE is the only reality and truth that makes our lives make sense, and I believe we will feel incomplete in our lives until we allow Him to fill our souls with His Spirit. That's when we begin to truly live the lives He created us for...that is the Living Water that satisfies forever.
What are the counterfeits that are trying to trick you into acceptance of something lesser than what God has ready for you? So many things in this current world of ours are available to us that can make us think, at least for a little while, that we are satisfied. The next big business deal or job promotion, the house that we've dreamed of and finally moved into, children that have just been accepted into the university that we feel certain will assure them of a wonderful future, reservations made for that long-awaited trip with our spouse....these can all be very wonderful achievements, and in themselves absolutely nothing wrong in enjoying. But if these goals take over our lives and consume our thoughts and demand our every minute of attention, then we have made our goals our gods. If we put aside God and His intentions for our lives in order to attain these earthly, and temporary, goals, they have indeed become gods in our lives, robbing us of the real thing.
If maintaining friendships, maintaining our ideal body or maintaining our homes become our "most important things", then we move those good and healthy habits out of things that are admirable into places of inappropriate priority.
As quoted from Timothy Keller, he identifies idolatry as "anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.” Personally, when I hear myself say “ I couldn’t live without________”, I stop and realize that I have probably made whatever that is into an idol.
So what do we do when we realize we’ve been duped? How do we trade in our counterfeits for the real thing? Again, quoting Keller, “ we need to offer them up,. We need to find a way to keep from clutching them too tightly, of being enslaved to them. We will never do so by mouthing abstractions about how great God is. We have to know, to be assured, that God so loves, cherishes, and delights in us, that we can rest our hearts in Him for our significance, insecurity, and handle anything that happens in life.”
Nothing else can give us that kind of satisfaction and security! I think it’s time to throw our counterfeits into the fire, and allow God to hand us the real fortunes that he is ready to lavish us with! Not fortunes of earthly value, but those that will sustain holy fire and follow us into eternity. (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). To build on goals of His design and of which He lays the foundation.
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