Egocentric idols

Image: Microsoft Clipart

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Isaiah1-4; Psalm 109

TO CHEW ON:  "Their land is also full of idols;
They worship the work of their own hands,
That which their own fingers have made." Isaiah 2:8


John Piper takes a little swipe at a common interpretation of Jesus' command, "You shall love your neighbour as yourself (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39):

"The popular misconception is that this command teaches us to learn to esteem ourselves so we can love others. This is not what the command means. Jesus does not command us to love ourselves. He assumes that we do." — John Piper, Desiring God, p. 209.

It seems to me there is only a short distance between healthy self-love and idolatrous self-love. I wonder if, in our rich, possession-obsessed society, we don't indulge in such idolatry more than we realize. We regularly look to the things we own to give us a sense of worth. We dote on their excellence and how their quality will reflect well on us. When we get down, we shop for more things to help us feel better.

Making an idol out of a car or house or pair of shoes is an easy kind of idolatry to identify. However, there are other ego-centric idols that are just as widespread, but may be harder to put their fingers on. Dale Hanson Bourke in a chapter on idols in her book Embracing Your Second Calling speaks of a Bible-study worksheet (written by Tim Keller) that probed her heart in this regard:

"...the worksheet contained a list of the types of idolatry many modern-day men and women embrace. In part, it included statements like:

Approval idolatry: 'Life only has meaning / I only have worth if I am loved and respected by...'


Control idolatry: Life only has meaning / I only have worth if I am able to get mastery over my life in the area of...'


Helping idolatry: 'Life only has meaning / I only have worth if people are dependent on me.'


Work idolatry: 'Life only has meaning / I only have worth if I am highly productive and get a lot done.'


Achievement idolatry: 'Life only has meaning / I only have worth if I am being recognized for my accomplishments / excelling in my career.'

...One suggestion from the study is to think about what you fear the most or what you worry about most often. If you follow that trail, you almost always arrive at the foot of an idol." -- Dale Hanson Bourke, Embracing Your Second Calling, pp. 90-91

These thoughts convict me. I need to sweep a spotlight into and through the tucked-away rooms of my heart to see what self-idols are hidden there. What about you?

PRAYER: Dear God, please show me where I am worshiping something/someone other than You. Amen.

PSALM TO PRAY: Psalm 109

The Bible Project VIDEO: Isaiah 1-39 (Read Scripture Series)






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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Tainted living-—recognize it, lay it aside

TODAY’S SPECIAL: 1 Peter 1:17-2:3

TO CHEW ON: “Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.” 1 Peter 2:1,2


I have recently found a new way to meditate on Bible passages—through Bible journaling. A book that introduced me to this activity describes what it is:

“Bible journaling is a way to express your faith creatively. Putting pen to paper is a great way to remember and record biblical concepts that are meaningful and relevant to your life. Whether you are drawing, coloring, and writing right inside your Bible—the most commonly understood definition—or writing and illustrating scripture verses in a separate book or on paper alongside your Bible, the essential thing to understand is that Bible journaling is about creating while reflecting on God’s word” - Joanne Fink & Regina Yoder, Complete Guide to Bible Journaling, p. 8.

The guidebook has tons of ideas, introduces prominent Bible journalers and their work, and suggests ways and places to share Bible journaling, doodles and lettering.

I was instantly attracted, dug out an old notebook New Testament with wide margins, and tried my hand at it.

My first attempts were meaningful and rich. As I drew and lettered, my mind dwelt on what I was illustrating. More snippets of Bible verses came to me, and I added them to the design. It was worthwhile and uplifting to me spiritually.

Then I searched #biblejournaling on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. I found many wonderful ideas—brilliant and bold artwork, flawless lettering that looked like it came from a computer. I joined a Facebook group where members share their work with each other. And slowly the purity leaked out of this activity for me as it became about comparison, envy, wanting "likes" for my work, pride. Yuck!

Today’s Bible text is right-on for this situation. It reminds me, and us, of the tendencies inherent within us (toward malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, evil speaking) and that they can infect any aspect of living (even studying the Bible!). It tells us in plain words that we need to lay them aside as we give attention to taking in, with the focus and single-mindedness that babies give to drinking a bottle, wholesome Bible truth.

May this be my (our) template for thought and action:

“Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of Jesus (not myself), thanking God the Father every step of the way” - Colossians 3:17 MSG).

“And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father” Colossians 3:17 NLT.

“Whatever you do [no matter what it is] in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus [and in dependence on Him], giving thanks to God the Father through Him” Colossians 3:17 AMP.

PRAYER: Dear Father, help me to not only recognize the carnal tendencies within myself, but to lay them aside by starving them—refusing to give them what they want. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Hypocrisy

The Prayer in Secret - Alexandre Bida

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Matthew 6:1-15

TO CHEW ON: “‘Therefore, when you do a charitable deed, do not sound a trumpet before you as the hypocrites do in the synagogue and in the streets, that they may have glory from men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward.’” Matthew 6:2

Hypocrite (hypokrites) is an interesting word. My study Bible describes how it comes from the Greek word hypokrinomai—the dialogue of actors who wore masks that amplified their voices. A hypokrites was one who acted in a play or read a script.

The dictionary definition of hypocrite is:
1] A person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles etc. that he or she does not actually possess; 2] A person who feigns some desirable or publicly approved attitude, whose private life, opinions or statements belie his or her public statements.

A short survey of “hypocrisy” in the Bible shows us some of its faces.
Hypocrisy can be:

• Words that don’t agree with intentions, especially when they relate to others, like our neighbours - Isaiah 55:21 also Psalm 28:3; Isaiah 62:4; Jeremiah 9:8.

• Flattery -  Psalm 78:36; Matthew 22:16.

• Actions or words that set a trap - Jeremiah 9:8; Proverbs 7:15; Mark 12:15.

• Actions or words that shirk responsibility - e.g. Pilate, when he washed his hands of Jesus making like he was helpless to do anything but give in to the wishes of the mob was a hypocrite - Matthew 27:24.

• Religious words or actions that are insincere- Jeremiah 12;2; 22:20.

• Religious words or actions performed to fool God- Jeremiah 3:10.

• Religious words or actions performed to manipulate God - Isaiah 58:3.

• Religious words or actions to further one’s own ends - Zechariah 7:5, our passage Matthew 6:1-15;  James 2:1-4.

I love the picturesque language Jesus used to describe hypocrisy (which He pointed out often in the Pharisees and scribes):
- He said hypocrites were like whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the outside but inside full of uncleanness and dead bones (Matthew 23:28).
- He said they were like cups and dishes, clean on the outside but full of greed and wickedness inside - Luke 11:39.
- He said the hypocrisy of the Pharisees permeated everything they did, like yeast permeates bread - Luke 12:1.

What a mess! Who'd want to have anything to do with a hypocrite or hypocrisy? Yet when I’m honest with myself, I have to admit I’ve been a hypocrite in both my dealings with others and God.

To eliminate hypocrisy, a good place to start is to be self-aware and recognize hypocrisy where it first appears—in our thoughts. Proverbs says of the miser, who invites you to eat and drink but is inwardly critical: “As he thinks in his heart, so is he” - Proverbs 23:7.

Then we need to acknowledge it as sin - 1 John 1:10.

Finally, we need to make a conscious effort to purge hypocrisy from our lives as we  love everyone—God and our fellow humans—sincerely and with pure motives. “Let love be without hypocrisy” - Romans 12:9.


PRAYER: Dear Father, help me to be aware of hypocrisy in my life, to acknowledge it as sin and to learn to love sincerely. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Tempted to exalt yourself?

Nathan & Bathsheba before David

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 1 Kings 1:1-21

TO CHEW ON: "Then Adonijah, the son of Haggith exalted himself saying, 'I will be king'; and he prepared for himself chariots and horsemen, and fifty men to run before him." 1 Kings 1:5


Adonijah, David's oldest living son, thought the throne should be his. Given the frailty of his aged father, he no doubt expected the process to be quick and easy. Taking the matter into his handsome hands he "exalted himself, saying 'I will be king.'"

The Bible speaks—and not reassuringly—of self-exaltation. Some examples:

• Satan exalted himself, declaring himself above God, before being thrown out of heaven - Isaiah 14:12-15.

• Moses accused Pharaoh of exalting himself against the Israelites when he refused to let them go (Exodus 9:17) and we know what happened to him.

• Though the words self exhalation aren't used, that's what Absalom, Adonijah's older brother had done when he tried to take over his father's throne - 2 Samuel 15:1-12. We have recently read of his inglorious end - 2 Samuel 18:9, 14.

Adonijah didn't reckon with the intervention of Nathan the prophet, who alerted Bathsehba, the mother of Solomon, to whom David had promised the throne. She went to David and very quickly the palace was in the thick of planning a legitimate coronation.

The temptation to exalt oneself is just as strong as ever. Though we don't do it to get a physical throne, the real need to be noticed in order to succeed in business or the arts in a noisy world easily morphs into self-exaltation.

More than ever we need wisdom to know when we've crossed the line between giving necessary information (advertising), and self-exaltation. May  the peace of God be the umpire in our hearts (Colossians 3:15 Amplified) as we resist the temptation to exalt ourselves, choosing instead the Kingdom-wise state of humility and faith that God will lift us up if and when it suits His purposes.

Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 5:3). James echoes that thought: "Let the lowly brother glory in his exaltation but the rich in his humiliation, because as a flower of the field he will pass away" (James 1:9-10).

Do I, do you have the faith to wait for God to exalt us and our projects and causes?

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to trust You to exalt me when needed and resist the temptation to exalt myself. Amen.

MORE: Anti-self-exaltation wisdom

"It is not good to eat much honey; So to seek one's own glory is not glory." - Proverbs 25:27

"Let another man praise you and not your own mouth; A stranger and not your own lips." - Proverbs 27:2

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Pride's ironic fall

"Death of Absalom" 
by William Brassey Hole

TODAY'S SPECIAL: 2 Samuel 18:1-18

TO CHEW ON: "And they took Absalom and cast him into a large pit in the woods, and laid a very large heap of stones over him .... Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up a pillar for himself which is in the King's Valley."  2 Samuel 18:17-18

Absalom's  story has several ironies in it.

His hair was a thing of wonder. The account goes that he was very handsome, praised for his good looks perhaps in large measure because of his thick head of hair which he cut annually to lighten its weight. Weighed, those shorn locks tipped the scale at 200 shekels—5 lbs. (2 Samuel 14:24-26).

How ironic, then, that it was his gorgeous hair that got caught in tree branches, putting him in the very undignified posture of "...hanging between heaven and earth..." and vulnerable to his father's soldiers.

After his death, Joab and the other soldiers heap over his body an inglorious pile of stones. The Bible account contrasts it with the monument he had made to himself:

"And they took Absalom and cast him into a large pit in the woods, and laid a very large heap of stones over him .... Now Absalom in his lifetime had taken and set up a pillar for himself which is in the King's Valley."  2 Samuel 18:17-18

Absalom's story speaks to me of the trap of pride and God's way of bringing back to bite us the very things we're most proud of. They remind me of the words of Absalom's little brother Solomon:

"Pride goes before destruction
And a haughty spirit before a fall" - Proverbs 16:18.

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to see my life as You see it. Point out to me where I am proud and ripening for a fall. Amen.

MORE: Terebinth tree

Check out these images of Terebinth trees to understand the hazard such a tree would have been to someone riding too close to its dense, low-growing branches.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Who is your audience?

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Matthew 23:1-12

TO CHEW ON: " 'But all their works they do to be seen by men.' " Matthew 23:5


In his book The Call, Os Guinness tells a story about the American philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and his mother. The Carnegies started out in Pittsburgh as a poor family. One day Andrew found his mother weeping in despair. Trying to console her, he said:

"Someday I'll be rich. We'll ride in a fine coach driven by four horses."

"That will do no good over here," his mother snorted, "if no one in Dunfermline (Scotland) can see us" - Os Guinness, The Call, p. 69.

Have you ever felt that way? What good is this accomplishment if  __x___ (my boss, my family, my Facebook friends, my colleagues, the people in my church, my city) don't see it?

Guinness says:

"Only madmen, geniuses, and supreme egoists do things purely for themselves. … Most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, do things with an eye to the approval of some audience or other. The question is not whether we have an audience but which audience we have" - Ibid, p. 70.

Here Jesus revealed to the crowds and the disciples who the audience of the sanctimonious scribes and Pharisees was: other people ("men"). The irony of this is that they posed their religious observances as done for God. But their actions—exaggerating the religious parts of their clothing (phylacteries and borders), loving the best places at feasts, insisting they be addressed as "Rabbi" demonstrated who they were really trying to impress.

I ask myself, who is my main audience? Whose opinion do I value most? What about you? If it's Jesus, as we say it is, then we will do the things that He values. Several of them are named here:

• Serve.

• Humble ourselves.

I love how Guinness concludes this chapter in his book:

"Do you wish to be inner-directed rather than other-directed and truly make one Audience decisive, the Audience of One? Listen to Jesus of Nazareth; answer His call" - Ibid p. 74.

PRAYER: Dear Jesus, how often I get distracted from living first and foremost for You, letting my thirst for the praise and attention of people dictate my actions. Help me to value Your opinion more than any person's so that my life will show that my audience truly is You.  Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

I - Me - My

Daniel interpreting Nebuchadnezzar's dream

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Daniel 4:19-37

TO CHEW ON: "The king spoke saying, 'Is not this great Babylon, that I have built for a royal dwelling by my mighty power and for the honour of my majesty?'" Daniel 4:30

The dream that King Nebuchadnezzar told Daniel in yesterday's reading he interprets in today's. It is not good news for the king. He will be removed from his throne, driven away by his own subjects because of what appears to be insanity.

But, Daniel says at the end of his interpretation, maybe you can change this fate by changing your ways (Daniel 4:27).

The king changes nothing. Perhaps it was for him like it is for us. We get a scare and for a few days resolve to make things right. But life goes on. The memory of the traumatizing moment becomes blurry and unreal. Eventually we forget all about it.

A year later we find Nebuchadnezzar walking about his palace congratulating himself on his achievements: "Is not this great Babylon that I have built..." And the judgement falls just as the dream and Daniel predicted.

What a good thing it is that we don't get judged in the same way every time we congratulate ourselves on our efforts and sing our own praises as if we were the engineers of our successes.

There are at least three reasons to avoid such prideful thoughts and talk:

1. It is ugly

• "To seek one's own glory is not glory" - Proverbs 25:27.

• "Let another man praise you and not your own mouth; A stranger and not your own lips" - Proverbs 27:2

2. It is unrealistic

• "It is God alone who judges; he decides who will rise and who will fall" - Psalm 75:7 (NLT).

• "Though you ascend as high as the eagle, And though you set your next among the stars, From there I will bring you down,' says the Lord" - Obadiah 1:4

3. It is demonic

• Such prideful thoughts brought down Lucifer - Isaiah 14:12-15.

PRAYER: Dear God, please help me to identify pride in my own heart and to deal with it. Amen.

MORE: Pride and social media

In these days of publicity and promotion by social media the pride/self-promotion pitfalls are many. Keiki Hendrix, author and book blogger, writes in her newsletter:

"Many authors feel they must promote themselves and their books in order to be recognized. This is why you see so many Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn posts with the words 'Me' or 'My Book' or something similar.

"I read the posts and I sigh to myself. Reading an author talk all about themselves, their book, their speaking engagements, etc. is a big turn off. I wrote about this ill advised marketing strategy for writers  in the article The What’s In It For Me (WIIFM) Factor recently. Here’s an excerpt:

Many times we don’t realize that what  we are silently conveying to our listeners or readers when we speak only of ourselves, our books, our own interests. In many aspects we disrespect the reader because the focus is on getting the book sold and not getting the message heard. 

If the majority of our social media status updates are links all about us, all about our books, or all about what we want to sell, what we are silently conveying to the reader is not adding value.  Instead we are participating in what marketing consultant, Mac MacIntosh, calls “we-we-weeing all over ourselves.”

Keiki Hendrix - The Kindred Connection Newsletter