The Community Fellowship is in the middle of a series called
EMPTY PROMISES. Before I share with you
from this weekend’s message I want to give a big shout out to Pastor Pete
Wilson from CrossPoint.tv in Nashville for sharing this series with us. The meat of this series is exposing the
things that keep our hearts from being changed by and turned to God.
Jesus
doesn’t want to edit behaviors; he wants to change hearts. That’s what the crux of this series leans
upon because often the idols in our lives keep us from being changed by God.
We would prefer to hear “don’t be
greedy, don’t be self-centered, don’t have sex outside of marriage, don’t be
power hungry”, but we must ask this question: what is it about our heart that
makes us want to chase things that keep us from pursuing God?
We can only answer that question by
dealing with difficult things in our lives.
One of the biggest idols of our day is a desire for success and
achievement. We live in a performance driven society.
Solomon said in
Ecclesiastes 2 that “anything I want, I can have”. He ended the section with “it’s all
meaningless”. In our culture we define
success by getting anything you want. We
say that getting possessions, or relationships, or position is being
successful. But when we say we want to
be successful like this we step over the line.
Deep inside all of us there is this
longing, a huge desire, to succeed, to live well, to make something of our
life, to make a difference in the world.
It's a God-given part of what it means to be a human being.
We were created to do something great
with our lives. We want to make a
difference, yet each one of us has been corrupted by sin, so we start looking
to success and accomplishment to give us something only God can give us.
We can either base our self worth on
success or achievement which is externally.
The reality is when something good happens we let it fill our worth
externally. Then we realize it will
never be enough.
The problem actually is that we
“confuse who we are with what we accomplish”.
Reality from God is far different.
When we base our confidence on success, we will often seek to be
approved by others to feel good about myself or want our children to behave
well so others will think I am a good parent.
There are lots of other thoughts on what this success looks and feels
like
You know you are not any more or any
less valuable to God because of your job, your salary or social status, and
even if you lose your job or your family is struggling. Even if you fail miserably and make mistakes,
God's affection for you does not change. Your value in His eyes does not
decline.
Our worth is based on what God says and
what Jesus has done for us!
Matthew
16:26 NLT
And what do
you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?
On the other hand we are to base our
identity and self worth on Christ. We
lose it all if we chose anything else as our foundation. Real self worth doesn’t
come from our performance or our evaluation of our performance; it comes from
how we believe and apply our position in Christ.
Psalm
139:14 NASB
I will give thanks to You, for I am
fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows
it very well.
God declares we have worth while
letting anything else define us grinds us down.
God declares we're somebody. We
matter. We are loved, treasured and
valued, which means our value is not up for grabs based on how successful we
are.
Remember this big thought: What we worship
shapes what we are and what we worship determines what we become. Jeremiah
made a similar statement regarding his faithless ancestors:
Jeremiah
2:5 NLT
…
They worshiped worthless idols, only to become worthless themselves.
If we worship money,
we’ll become a greedy person. If we
worship sex, we’ll become a lustful person.
If we worship power, we’ll become a corrupt person. If we worship accomplishment, we’ll become a
restless. If we worship love and
acceptance, we’ll become a slave to what others think of you. And worshipping anything other than the true
God will make us something other than what he created us to be.
That
is not what God desires for us and from us. You cannot be a reflection of God if you are
worshipping anything besides God
Breaking the pattern of
idolatry in our lives not only requires a “turn from” but a “turn to”. We can’t just stop worshipping a certain
idol. We have to start worshipping God. Worshipping him continually reminds us…. It’s
about his power, not ours. It’s about
his purposes, not ours. It’s about his
glory, not ours.
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