Deuteronomy 4:24
For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God. (NKJV)
I remember the first time my eyes fell on this scripture. It never occurred to me that our Heavenly Father was a jealous God. His jealousy is different from the jealousies that His children experience. He is jealous of what we worship with our heart, mind and soul that replaces Him.
He is not going to stand still for his children to bow down to any other God. There were and are consequences for that. He wants our love, devotion and our worship placed in Him, and Him only. He wants no distractions or idolizing going on that moves Him into any place but first in our hearts.
Our Father took His children for a walk in the desert for forty years. They whined and complained. Their unbelief would keep them from entering the Promised Land. They did not believe that God could and would be, all they needed to survive. He was enough. He provided enough. He desired obedience from them. He has not changed.
Not me Father! You don’t have to worry about this child of yours. I have nothing that distracts me. I don’t have any graven images or idols in my house. You are the only one for me!
Fast forward from that thought to the present. The place for this learning experience is my own humble abode. Have you ever noticed things tucked, packed and stuck away in every free space of your home? When we no longer have room inside we move things to the garage, then we build storage buildings in the yard. Sometimes we have to rent off site storage buildings to catch the over flow. We have so many things that periodically we have to line it up outside our homes to sell so we have room for more.
The enemy has tried and successfully, to divert our attention from Father God and on to an idol called materialism. That is what he did in Eden. He put in the mind of our first parents that all that they had in paradise was not enough. They needed more. They could have everything but the fruit from ONE tree. They sacrificed all they had to have that one more thing…the knowledge of good and evil.
When God gets ready to move in my life, He moves quickly and bluntly. Have you had a similar experience? I hear the voice of my Shepherd calling me out for a walk through His word and a “journal conversation.”
I will be cleaning through years of accumulated “things” for several more days. I am calling this my “winter cleaning.” These things we just thought we had to have will now be donated or discarded. The goal is to remove and then stop seeking after things to make us happy. Have you found that after that thing you just had to have is yours, that it no longer satisfies? We are ready to find the next “new” thing? The idols of our present world are not like those in the days of Moses. No, they are the idols of our time in history. They are what we use to fill a void in our lives that God desires to fill. Time to clean house and heart?
Thought For Today: Take a walk through your life and home. See if you find as I, that these things have overtaken you. Cluttered up your life. Sort through that clutter and bless others or discard what is not useable. I have found that going room to room, drawer to drawer, cabinet to cabinet removing things is beginning to make not only my home feel lighter and refreshed but refreshing my heart as well. I hope I am successful at learning that God gives His children enough for the day.
Exodus 34:14
14 You must worship no other gods, for the LORD, whose very
name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you. (NLT)
Leviticus 26:1
‘You shall not make idols for yourselves;
neither a carved image nor a sacred pillar shall you rear up for yourselves;
nor shall you set up an engraved stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am the LORD your God.
Proverbs 8:17
17 I love those who love me, And those who seek me diligently will find me.
Prayer For Today:
Hello Father! We want to worship only You. Help us be satisfied with the things that You wish for us. Thank you that you have made provision to supply our needs, not our wants. Help us declutter our hearts and replace that space with only You.In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.