Good morning…
I passed a sign in the front lawn of a little church. “What you hold on to is your God.” If I were the sign-putter-outer, I would change three things. The pronouns. The capitalization. And I would add one more word. “What we hold on to fiercely is our god.”
First off, God is God, and God is the only One deserve a capital “G.” Regardless of whether we pay attention to the LORD or not, God is the only true God, the Creator of the universe, the Giver of each breath, the Sustainer who is in the process of making everything new.
Secondly, we are all god-hoarding people. If it were not our natural tendency to grab for other gods, why would God’s first commandment be this? “You shall have no other gods before me,” Exodus 20:3 (NIV). Stuff. Children. Super Bowl rings. Every good thing can turn into a god, pushing itself to the front of the line, if we do not hold tightly to the hand of God alone.
Lastly, I would add “fiercely,” because those things that we defend passionately are the top things threatening God’s first place in our lives. What do we hold on to fiercely? Our money? Our loved one? Our wine bottle? When we find ourselves fiercely protecting something near and dear, might it be time to release that person or this thing into the all-loving, all-powerful care of our Creator? No bigger and better set of hands exist.
“If you are truly serious about coming back to God, clean house. Get rid of the foreign gods…ground yourselves firmly in God, worship him and him alone, and he’ll save you…” (1 Samuel 7:3, MSG). More and more of our true self is saved as we hold on to God above all of other things, our stuff and our children, our Super Bowl rings and our money, our loved ones and our wine bottle.
If we are able to prayerfully release our gods into the care of our LORD, we can see them as they are once let them go, an enjoyable blessing God has bestowed.
…Sue…
