Wow. 3 posts in one week.
I just had to put my thoughts out there because I got slayed while reading the Bible today.
Deuteronomy 13:4 reads It is the Lord your God you must follow and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.
But a couple of chapters before it states Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. (Deut. 11:16).
These two verses and a verse in Psalms just stopped me in my tracks.
It’s amazing how easily we are enticed to turn away. I don’t think there’s really an hour (minute?) that goes by when we’re not being enticed by anything. Advertisement is EVERYWHERE, enticing us, urging us to believe that what’s missing in our lives is what they have.
Didn’t like the old Frappuccino? It’s okay, now we offer the NEW however you want it Frap!
Your flat screen TV, it’s outdated! Come get the new 3-D tv!
Click here to see women in scandalous situations!
Buy this phone so that you’re connected wherever you go!
This car has way more new functions than your old one!
I mean, the moment we are up, we’re bombarded by advertisers.
And it gets harder and harder NOT to get enticed.
But in ministry, we can be enticed by other things, and not just by the media.
Instead of holding fast to God, we start holding fast to ourselves and our insecurities.
We start compromising our standards to meet numbers. We lower the bar for membership so that our church looks alive in the books.
We start chasing after the approval of the people rather than seek God’s will.
We start being enticed by the praises people heap upon us, and forgetting that this is about God.
Or we start believing all the negative things people say about us, forgetting that we are a child of God and God has called us to do ministry because God believes that we can do ministry, otherwise God would’ve never called you or me.

Because we’re losing track of what we’re called to do, our lives start becoming full of clutter.
We fill up our time being connected to the world wide web every we go, that we become disconnected to the Creator.
We fill up our day wondering who we may have upset and who we need to please.
We fill up our thoughts thinking that we desperately need the new TV, the new car, the new electronic… the new person in our lives that is not our spouse…

But there’s a remedy to all this.
Going back to the basics.
Filling up ourselves with the faith and belief that God loves us and that complete wholeness and satisfaction lies in God and God alone.
When was the last time you were still and got know that God is God?
When was the last time that you unplugged from the world to bask in God’s glorious presence?

Let’s take time out of every day to meditate on God’s Word and to be in prayer, to be in communion with God.
A lot of our worries can be refocused/redirected/released by finding out God’s heart and desire for us rather than focusing on our own desires of our hearts.
Be careful, because we can so easily be enticed to worship other gods of this world.
But when we follow God, revere God, keep God’s commands and obey him; serve God and hold fast to him, we won’t be so easily swayed. All the enticement, all the advertisement, in the end it’s a lie. It’s a quick-fix. It’s a band-aid for a dam with a leak. It’s a satisfaction that is easy come and easy go. There’s only one source in this universe that will provide what we are looking for.
As St. Augustine once wrote: My heart is restless until it rests in You.
So take a break from the world and reconnect with God.