by Lucy | Mar 21, 2017 | biblical counseling, emotions |
Theology–are your beliefs off-kilter? Or are they bringing you closer to Him?
Three decades ago, my personal beliefs dissed God and elevated self. This was my off-kilter theology. I was the center of my tiny universe and miserable. You see, my happiness meant the acceptance of others–girlfriends, teachers, parents, guys, and especially me.
God freed me from me. Read my freedom story, if you’d like. And he taught me theology.
What’s Theology?
Theology is the study of God. This sound terribly boring to most people, but did you know that what you believe about God is the most important thing about you? And about the direction of your life?
When your beliefs line up with biblical truth, you’ll experience contentment even when your circumstances are cruddy. When your beliefs are based on the world’s idea of happiness, including
- more money
- more success
- more acceptance
- more security
- more, more, more
. . .then you’ll experience unhappiness or a temporal and lonely kind of happiness dependent on getting the next happy high. This false happiness promises to deliver. It doesn’t. Instead, you receive misery.
God wants to give you peaceful contentment.
[The Lord says,] I will satisfy the weary soul, and every languishing soul I will replenish.” Jeremiah 31:25, ESV
You’ll receive peaceful contentment–whether you’ve been a Christ follower for a month or many years–when you believe God is who he says he is. You and I could zero in on a number of truths about him. For now let’s pick one that trips up many women: goodness.
God Is Good Even. . .
. . .when your husband cheats on you, your toddler becomes very ill, you lose all your savings, horrible childhood memories surface. God is good in manageable circumstances like a flu or when a close friend forgets your birthday. What difficult circumstance do you face now? Does it concern family, a shattered dream, health, or something else?
In counseling someone I’ll call Marilyn, I discovered that her core theology was tangled in a misunderstanding of the word “good” and how it applied to her everyday life. She felt frustrated over Romans 8:28 and its promise that all things work together for good.
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
A Christian since her teens, Marilyn had misinterpreted the meaning of this verse and couldn’t practically apply it to her difficult, loveless marriage. She had a simplistic view of Romans 8:28, thinking that since she loves God, he must change her husband into a selfless man since this would be good. Most assuredly, selflessness is good. But this isn’t the meaning of the verse.
Marilyn and I explored this verse together like theologians.
We discovered that the “good” is this: God is works in us to make us more like Jesus. The next two verses showed that our thinking was on the right path. So we read Romans 8:28-29 too.
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
As Marilyn’s theology aligned with biblical truth, she came to accept that God might not change her husband–or make her healthy or wealthy–and she learned something something wonderful: God was changing her and she hungered to know him better.
Let’s Make It Personal
Is your theology off-kilter? It’s skewed whenever you elevate your desires and turn them into must-have needs. Yes, God gives us good things; however, sometimes we twist what is good into an idol.
An example: sex. Sex is a gift of God to be shared by a husband and wife in marriage. When the gift of sex becomes a craving for porn, it is now an idol.
When desires become needs, you expose that your life is more about what you want than what God wants. Here are a few questions posed by biblical counselor, author, and speaker Paul Tripp:
- Desire: “You should do _____ for me.”
- Need: “You will do _____ for me.”
- Expectation: “I expect you to do _____ for me.”
- Disappointment: “You didn’t do _____ for me.”
- Punishment: “You didn’t do _____ for me so I’m going to make you pay in some way.”
You know God deserves your unadultered love because he not only created you but also loves you and knows what’s best for you.
Little children, keep yourselves from idols. 1 John 5:21
You shall have no other gods before me. Exodus 20:3
What idols do you possess? Did you know that they often fall into the areas of love, security, and significance? Do you want to be free of them?
Do what Marilyn decided. She chose to readjust her thinking into a God-centered way of looking at her life rather than sticking with her old way of thinking. Her old way led to misery. Her new way opens wide the door to true happiness.
Hope for Your Heart,
by Lucy | Sep 15, 2016 | biblical counseling, thoughts
Idolatry is making a god of something or someone who is NOT the God. All of us are tempted to cozy up to idols. Guest writer Ellen Castillo, one of the counselors in Heart2Heart Counselor Directory, reveals her go-to idol and how she–and you–can learn to say “no” and flee. Her article appeared first here on her website and is used with permission.
What do you run to? What should you run from?
Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. 1 Corinthians 10:15
It’s humbling to admit this. For many years my go-to idol has been. . .food. Sin is always humbling, isn’t it? And it can be embarrassing and even humiliating, except that the Gospel takes care of that kind of self-focus and self-condemnation.
I’ll take the humbling, because that is what keeps me from turning back to idolatry. I’ll keep purposing to reject the embarrassment and humiliation, because I know that my sins are forgiven. To try to pretend that I am not the worst of sinners is just silly because it’s written all over me. And you.
Let’s remember this: we have a Savior.
Idolatry Everywhere!
Idolatry today comes wrapped in a lot of different packages. Food, alcohol, drugs, prescription meds, sex, materialism, shopping, anger, status, playing the victim, seeking aproval and attention, relationships, celebrities, pride of all kinds, and so many more.
There is no end, really, to what we allow to become idols in our hearts. Whatever we put before God, wherever our treasure is, whatever we worship, those are our idols.
Click & Tweet!
There is a reason these idols are called “false gods.” They are counterfeits. They ultimately fail us. We actually “become like them” and that is, to put it bluntly, disgusting.
Disgusting Idols
The psalmist wrote:
The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breath in their mouths. Those who make them become like them, so do all who trust in them! Psalm 135:15-18
This disgust gripped me a few months ago when I got a serious medical diagnosis that is worsened by my idolatry. I realized I had “eyes, but did not see, ears, but did not hear, and there was no breath in my mouth.”
I won’t say my idol is entirely gone now, but I am seeing consistent victories along the way. Praise God, it is His work in me, not my own. I am too weak apart from His strength. I have a long ways to go, but I am daily choosing to go toward Christ rather than my toward my false god.
Where are you going?
The Gospel Ensures Victory
One of the beautiful things about Jesus’s Gospel is that we do not need to strive for victory.
Yes, there is a part we must engage by obedience, but when (not if) we fail at times, we can praise God because He does not see what we see. Even if my hand gets caught in the cookie jar, I am forgiven.
Click & Tweet!
That does not excuse my behavior nor does it give me the green light to worship my idols. It does offer me grace to get back up again and press on in obedience because of the indwelling Spirit in me. I need to know that God’s love for me does not change (nor does my eternal security) when I fail at times, and I do fail. But by God’s grace you and I can experience more victories and fewer setbacks as long as we are not relying on our own strength.
How does God deal with our idolatry? How are we to be rid of it? We see in Scripture that His dealings with His people were consistent and blatant. We see the same kind of dealings with our current culture (just view the news or your Facebook feed and you will see it.)
The Word Reveals Our Need
The commands are clear: we are to have no other gods before Him. God is a jealous God.
You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:3-6
In our personal lives, if you have a personal relationship with Him through His Son, Jesus, God deals with us and our sin of idolatry very individually and specifically. For example, my conviction came as a result of that scary medical diagnosis that requires a change of habits if I want to be healthy and live to know my grandkids, Lord willing.
We fashion our idols and enjoy them for awhile, until God reveals to us the thoughts, beliefs, and desires that lie at the core of our hearts. Those are the things that mold and transform in to our idols.
Heart Matters
Out of that core of our hearts flow the things we worship, and we must remember that those things are not going to satisfy ultimately because:
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? Jeremiah 17:9
God’s Word is clear. When God reveals our idols to us, we are then responsible to flee them.
Ephesians 4 instructs us to put off the old man, and put on the new. Through the conviction, empowering, and enabling of the Holy Spirit, we can do this. We can say no.
Titus 2:12 reminds us that grace actually teaches us to say no.
Grace. The Gospel. Spirit indwelling. SAY NO. Flee!
Sharing Hope with Your Heart,
