Thanks, everyone, for your encouraging feedback after the release of my project about keeping God first when life is busy and full. Long story short, it contains over 75 ideas from Christian leaders about how they keep God first. These are practical ideas you can easily try in your own life, and I’ve included a short application guide that should help you live it out. If you missed it, you can learn more here and get it now just below the post. It’s free.
New 5 Day Mini-Series: Let’s Make Some Progress
If you’re familiar with Kickstarter, they’re all about helping creatives bring their projects to life. To get the funding and resources they need to go from dream to reality so the world can benefit.
In many ways, I think that’s what we need for our relationship with God. To be intentional, and take the good desire we have to get closer to God to make that a reality.
So, I’d like to do some follow-up on my Keeping God First project and help all of us take some small steps forward over the next 5 days. Each day, I’ll be doing a quick post including:
- a scripture
- an idea from one of the contributors to the project
- an application question
Buckle up, here we go!
Day 1 – Idolatry: What’s Holding You Back?
- Scripture – And the word of the Lord came to me: 3 ‘Son of man, these men have taken their idols into their hearts, and set the stumbling block of their iniquity before their faces. Should I indeed let myself be consulted by them? 4 Therefore speak to them and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: Any one of the house of Israel who takes his idols into his heart and sets the stumbling block of his iniquity before his face, and yet comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him as he comes with the multitude of his idols, 5 that I may lay hold of the hearts of the house of Israel, who are all estranged from me through their idols. 6 Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: Repent and turn away from your idols, and turn away your faces from all your abominations’. (Ezekiel 14:3-6)
- Try this (from ebook) – ‘Part of the problem is being too busy. We constantly need to assess where we are spending our time remembering that whatever is squeezing God out of our life is likely our idol (and we may have more than one)’. (Tremper Longman, author of How To Read The Bible With Heart & Mind) An idol is anything that threatens to replace God as the rightful center of our lives. It can be something wrong in and of itself (like pornography), or, desiring something good too much (like affirmation for our work).
- Challenge – Take some time to think about what’s squeezing God out of your life. What would it look like to begin repenting of these idols and turning toward God? (You can see what God showed me, and add your own response, in the comments just below.)
See you here tomorrow for Day 2!
Hey everyone, just sharing what God showed me on Day 1. One of my biggest idols is being productive. That can be a good thing, but way too often I categorize my day as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based solely on whether I accomplished everything I wanted to. You can guess how often that happens… so, I’m asking God to help me remember that his love is unconditional and not tied to my performance.
Would love to hear what God is showing you guys.