Distrusting God?

"We distrust God when we are fearful of losing control. When we try to take control we ultimately leave no room for God to be God." (Lysa TerKeurst, Trustworthy)

Those were the first two sentence that started the Bible study I was working on that day. And they hit me like a sucker punch in the gut.

I'd spent most of the week leading up to that day living fearful of losing control in a part of my life. My ability to imagine the worst case scenario outcome of something had been racing ahead of reality for days. And I was exhausted because of it.

Living in fear of losing control is exhausting. 

Living in a constant state of imagining the worst possible outcome of a situation is exhausting.

And I knew that.

But, until I read those words, I hadn't connected them to my current situation.

The part of those words that hit the hardest was that my fear of losing control was actually distrusting God. I don't usually think of all of my efforts to control things as distrust of God. But, as I thought about it more, I realized how true it was.

I had an entire week of studying the lives of a couple less well-known kings of Israel and Judah to really see that. 1 Kings 12 & 13 tell us about the first two kings of the divided kingdom that followed Solomon. Rehoboam, Solomon's son, made some poor choices and the kingdom was divided. 

Jeroboam became king over the 10 tribes of the northern kingdom of Israel. And, he began to make decisions that revealed his distrust in God and his fear of losing control. These choices led Israel into idolatry and turning away from God.

It can be easy to read this and think we won't do that. We're not kings and we're likely not going to build golden calves for people to worship. That may be true, but when we stop to look at what drives some of our decisions, we may see more similarities than we do at first - at least I did when I read it.

1 Kings 12:26-27 says:

Jeroboam thought to himself, "The kingdom will now likely revert to the house of David. If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem, they will give their allegiance to the their lord, Rehoboam, king of Judah. They will kill me and return to king Rehoboam.

Jeroboam was afraid of losing control of the people and that led him to make choices that proved he didn't really trust God. Those choices led him and Israel astray.

But, Jeroboam had a promise from God (see 1 Kings 11:29-40), that he could trust. When things stopped going clearly as he though they would, Jeroboam reacted in fear of losing control and revealed his distrust in God.

How often do we do the same thing in our own lives?

This is exactly what I'd been doing in the week leading up to this realization. And, as I studied the outcome of it, I knew it wasn't where I wanted to stay. I had to make a choice to trust God with what I can't control. I had to let go of the fear of losing control. And I still have to choose that everyday in this area of my life right now. But, I know it's the best choice.

Is there an area of your life where your fear of losing control means you are not trusting God?

What would it look like to trust God in this area of your life today?

The Danger of Being One Step Off God's Path

Sometimes it seems like there's nothing to worry about is we're just a little but out of line in one area of our lives - especially if it seems small, and we're just one step outside of God's path. We don't really worry about it because we're not really that far off. Little do we realize how dangerous this is.

The life and reign of King Solomon in Israel illustrates this quite clearly. Solomon was known for his wisdom - the thing he asked God for. King Solomon had it all, but he was led astray and ended up far from God's ways.

1 Kings 3 records a well-known part of Solomon's story in Scripture. This is where he is given the chance to ask God for whatever he wants and he chooses to ask for wisdom. Because of his choice, God blessed him, not only with the wisdom he asked for, but also wealth and a long life (1 Kings 3:10-15).

Every time I've turned to this passage, that has been the focus. And it's important. But, the other day when I started reading, I was stopped by just the first three verses of this chapter. They have something important to teach us.

1 Kings 3:1-3 says:

"Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the city of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the Lord, and the wall around Jerusalem. The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the Lord. Solomon showed his love for the Lord by walking according to the instructions given him by his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places."

Near the beginning of Solomon's reign as king, we can see the subtle ways he's being pulled off God's path. There's two key ways given in this passage.

First, Solomon married the daughter of Pharaoh king of Egypt. The Egyptians were not followers of Yahweh. She would have had her own god and religious practices she brought with her into this marriage.

Second, Solomon continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense at the high places. The high places were where the gods of the peoples surrounding Israel would have been worshiped and their practices were detestable to Yahweh. But, Solomon was still participating in it.

Yes, it was good that Solomon was walking in God's ways in the rest of his life. And we see the benefits of that in the rest of 1 Kings 3. The long-term effects of these two things couldn't yet be seen. But, if we take a quick glance ahead at the end of Solomon's life, we see how his wives who each had their own gods and religious practices led him astray and he was far from God's ways. The pattern intensified as Solomon's life went on, but if began subtly, here at the beginning of his reign.

Much of Solomon's life as recorded in 1 Kings 3 was about living God's way. Looking at his life, it would have been easy to see the things he was doing that pleased Yahweh. And that would make it easier to justify that these other two things didn't really matter - that they were insignificant.

And that's exactly what we do. It's often easy to justify a couple of little things, especially if the rest of life is being done God's way. But, there's a huge danger lurking here. We might only be one step off God's path right now, but if we continue to go int hat direction, it won't take long for us to be much further off.

And we don't often realize how far off we've gotten until it's a long way back to God's path. By the time we realize it, we're distant and have lost the intimacy with God we once had.

Are there places in your life where you need to get back on God' path before you've ended up a lot further away then you ever intended to get?

The Victory is Already Ours

If we already have victory, why are we so often living in defeat?

If we already have victory, why does it seem so hard to live that way?

"You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the One who is in you, is greater than the one who is in the world." (1 John 4:4)

The use of the word "them" when it talks about overcoming has always seemed a bit strange to me. But, when I was reading this verse in the larger context recently, it made more sense to me.

We often use this verse when we talk about being able to defeat Satan in our lives. And that is true and powerful. But, I think this verse paints a broader picture too. In 1 John 4:1-6, John is talking about antichrists who have come to deceive people. They are trying to get us off course.

1 John 4:4 is then talking about the power we have in the spiritual world over all of Satan's forces. It's not just about the ultimate defeat of Satan, but also about the day-to-day defeat of evil spirits who attach us with their deceptions and lies.

So, if this is true, then why do we so often live in defeat?

Why aren't we living in the victory that this passage and so many others say we can?

I think John goes on to answer this in 1 John 5:5 where he says:

"Who is it that overcomes to world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."

It all comes down to what we believe. Not what we say we believe, but what we actually believe. It's our actions that reveal this.

Far too often we're actually believing the lies of the enemy and his demons over the truth from God. Oh, we might say we believe God and we can probably recite truth from our heads, but we don't really believe it. Our actions reveal what we're truely believing. They show where we're believing lies.

We act on what we truely believe. In fact, that's what belief truely is - putting your life on it, living it out. We can way whatever we want about what we believe, but our actions will show what we're actually believing.

What are you believing? What do your actions say you believe?

Are you willing to let God point out to you the lies you believe, so He can show you the truth? Are you willing to ask Him to help you to live out the truth instead of the lies you've been believing?

It has to translate into our actions and how we live for it to actually be changed. We need to be willing to act on what we say we believe if it's actually going to make a difference and live in the victory Scripture tells us we can have.

Making God's Good Gifts Into False gods

I was studying the story of Israel making the golden calf found in Exodus 32 recently. As I dug deeper into the story I was stopped short by something I hadn't noticed before. And it made me stop and think for a while.

In Exodus 32:2 Aaron tells Israel to take off the gold earrings they are wearing and bring them to him. Verses 3-4 go on to say that these were used to make the make the golden calf that Israel worshipped.

God's Gift to Israel

It was a connection to where Israel got this gold from in the first place that stopped me. Israel was wandering in the desert. All they had was what they had taken them when God led them out of Egypt.

Exodus 12:35-36 says: "The Israelites did as instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. The Lord made the Egyptians favourably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for, so they plundered the Egyptians."

The gold that the Israelites gave Aaron to make the golden calf to worship instead of the true God in Exodus 32, came from this. They used the gold that God gave them from the Egyptians when they left to make an idol to worship.

They took God's good gift to them and made it into a false god that they then worshipped.

I hadn't made the connection until the study I was working through helped me to. My first thought on reading that was "ouch." A bit of a slap in the face for God from His people.

Turning God's Good Gifts Into Idols in Our Lives

I quickly realized how easily we do the same thing in our lives. Just as the Israelites did, we can easily take the good things God gives us and make them into false gods in our lives. We don't want to admit that's what we do, but if we get honest we can see how we do that.

As example would be when we take a job we have that we are good at. A job where the skills and ability to do it are good gifts we have been given by God. Instead of worshipping God in how we use those good gifts, we begin to focus on the skills and abilities we were given. Our lives being to revolve around them - we put them against God. We have taken God's good gift to us and make it into a false god that we're worshipping instead of God.

There are many areas of life we can do that. We can do it with our families, with money, with our possessions, with power. Whatever the area, the result is the same, we've put up a false god in our lives and are no longer worshipping the true God - even if we say differently.

Are there areas in your life where you have taken God's good gift to you and turned it into a false god?

If there is, we need to confess those to God and ask His forgiveness. Then we need to ask for His help to tear down that idol and put Him back in the right place in our lives. He will help us do that, if we ask Him.