{"id":1385,"date":"2022-12-04T11:12:46","date_gmt":"2022-12-04T01:12:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/?p=1385"},"modified":"2022-12-04T11:12:48","modified_gmt":"2022-12-04T01:12:48","slug":"idols-of-the-heart-misplaced-devotion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/2022\/12\/04\/idols-of-the-heart-misplaced-devotion\/","title":{"rendered":"Idols of the heart &#8211; Misplaced Devotion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Since I am on break, I have started reading a new book. The title of the book is \u201cIdols of the Heart,\u201d written by Elyse Fitzpatrick. In chapter 3 she walks through the 10 commandments from the stand point of idolatry. I thought today I would just share some thoughts from her book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>God\u2019s primary command is, \u201cYou shall have no other gods before Me\u201d (Ex. 20:3). How astonishing! By it, God demands our absolute and unequivocal devotion to Him alone. Only the \u201chigh and exalted One Who lives forever, whose name is Holy\u201d has the right to demand such fidelity.<br><br>This commandment is preeminent because it is impossible for us to obey any of the other nine if we fail to obey this one. Every part of our devotion, every act of obedience or disobedience, every thought, word, and deed, hang upon our adherence to this command. You might be thinking, \u201cWow, that\u2019s a pretty sweeping statement,\u201d but think with me for a moment as we review a few of the other commandm<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>\u201cHonor your father and your mother.\u201d Don\u2019t children fail to honor their parents because they have other gods such as their friends or the love of the world?<\/li><li>\u201cYou shall not murder.\u201d Whenever someone takes the life of another, isn\u2019t that person saying, in essence, \u201cI\u2019m god. I can decide who will live and who will die\u201d?<\/li><li>\u201cYou shall not commit adultery.\u201d Isn\u2019t the taking of another\u2019s spouse the worship of another god such as romance, excitement, power, or pleasure?<\/li><li>\u201cYou shall not covet.\u201d Strongly desiring anything that belongs to someone else is idolatry because it is the treasuring of something more than God and His will. As you can see, having \u201cno other gods\u201d is the hinge upon which our entire obedience hangs. That is because the command against idolatry is really a command to love, to \u201chang our hearts\u201d on God alone. \u201cTo say that there is one God and no god but God is not simply an article in a creed. It is an overpowering, brain-hammering, heart-stopping truth that is a command to love the only one worthy of our entire and unswerving allegiance.\u201d The sum of this commandment is that we must set God apart from everything else in our hearts and give Him a place of priority above all else. It means that by faith we are to seek to believe that He is as good and loving as He claims to be and that He will be to us the source of all good, all our joys.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>As I put these thoughts into the context of what God has been teaching me \/ challenging me with, here is what this is saying to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I allow my work and the pressures of ministry, to be in a place of priority over God in my heart, then I am not living in the way that God intended! Because God requires \/ expects \/ commands that He be set apart from everything else in our hearts and that He be given the place of priority above all else! I certainly have not been doing that recently. My times with God have not been times of communion and fellowship with God. They have been rote and duty. I have been so focused on the work that needs to be done and the pressures of managing things, that I have not been \u201cdevoted\u201d to God, I have been \u201cdevoted\u201d to my work, and it\u2019s exhausting!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;It means that by faith we are to seek to believe that He is as good and loving as He claims to be and that He will be to us the source of all good, all our joys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Elyse goes on to say,<br>\u201cThe first commandment is primarily interested in my inward devotion: in it I am commanded to \u201clove, fear, and trust in Him above all things.\u201d Every sin, every idolatry in my heart, is rooted in lovelessness, thanklessness, and misplaced trust. Every time I worship something or someone other than God I forget that He\u2019s a good Father and a great King who has brought me out of Egypt. By contrast, every truly godly act, including even the inner desire to be godly, springs out of the love and worship that He has placed in my heart. His grace causes me to delight in the law because I see it as the pattern for me to grow to be like Him.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It\u2019s amazing as I stop now, and look back, not only had I allowed the pressures of ministry to overwhelm me and consume me, but in that misplaced devotion, they have become my god, an idol that I have devoted all my energy, thoughts and time to! Wow! That\u2019s a pretty sobering picture. I don\u2019t want to be there anymore!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Declarations:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Anything that consumes my thinking, my time, and my energy, apart from God, is an idol! misplaced devotion &#8211; God wants to have first place in my heart!<\/li><li>I want to make God first priority in my life. I am committing to make time for him every day. If I am not able first thing, I will stop and make time during another part of the day! He needs to have first place!<\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since I am on break, I have started reading a new book. The title of the book is \u201cIdols of the Heart,\u201d written by Elyse Fitzpatrick. In chapter 3 she walks through the 10 commandments from the stand point of idolatry. I thought today I would just share some thoughts from her book. God\u2019s primary [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[130596],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1385","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-declarations-of-truth","7":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1385\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/david-watters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}