“When anything in life is an absolute requirement for your happiness and self-worth, it is essentially an ‘idol,’ something you are actually worshiping. When such a thing is threatened, your anger is absolute. Your anger is actually the way the idol keeps you in its service, in its chains. Therefore if you find that, despite all the efforts to forgive, your anger and bitterness cannot subside, you may need to look deeper and ask, ‘What am I defending? What is so important that I cannot live without?’ It may be that, until some inordinate desire is identified and confronted, you will not be able to master your anger.”
3I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
One of the blessings of doing this every day, has been that I cannot avoid tough scripture. I can't dismiss it and flip to passages that are more encouraging. I have to deal with the tough ones. These last few have been revealing because Paul makes it very clear that the only allegiance acceptable for my heart is God. Anything and everything else is counterfeit.JOURNAL
Having grown up in the church, I have heard this most of my life. Yet I feel I am finally understanding this in ways that I never have before. Because when I consider my actions and the community and world I live in, I see how the tentacles of my faith reach and imbed themselves in so many things.
One of the chief counterfeits of my heart are people. For most of my life I have had unrealistic expectations and hope in friends, family, authority etc. What I have discovered over and over again is that people are flawed, people are not Gods and they were never intended to be trusted and counted on as such. To do so creates dependence and burdens that destroy relationships.
It is not that people and relationships are to be avoided...quite the opposite. It is just they are never to be viewed as a refuge for my heart. The Psalm could not be more clear. Only God can be a refuge. Everything else will fail and trusting in it for my identity and my ultimate hope will prove disappointing and will in the end do great damage.
This is sobering to realize but it is also freeing. It gives me the freedom to let people off the hook. It gives me the freedom to love them...not for what they can give me, but just because they are here and just because God put them in my life and heart. That is a freedom worth celebrating, that is a joy worth holding onto.
12What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.c
- 1 CORINTHIANS 2:12-13
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