Not even a hint...

"You shall utterly destroy all the places where the nations whom you shall dispossess serve their gods, on the high mountains and on the hills and under every green tree.  You shall tear down their altars and smash their sacred pillars and burn their Asherim with fire, and cut down the engraved images of their gods and obliterate their name from that place."--Deuteronomy 12:3-4.  God, through Moses instructing Israel that they are to completely destroy anything having to do with the false gods the people they would conquer are serving so that there is not even a hint of them left in the land.

Not even a hint.  Yesterday at worship services, our preacher made the statement that when we are first baptized into Christ, much of the time is that our mindset at that point is that we are going to serve God with everything we have and nothing is going to stop us.  This is a great mindset and the Lord expects this kind of commitment from us.  However, the next the statement our preacher made was that soon the challenges to our faith come and tempt us to give second thoughts to the commitment we made.  This was in the context of a sermon based on Luke 9:23 where Jesus says that whoever wishes follow Him must deny Himself, take up His cross and follow Him.

So with all this is mind the question becomes what can help Israel follow God with everything they have and most importantly what can help us as Christians follow Christ with everything we have?  In both cases, we must do everything we can to destroy anything having to do with foreign gods so that there is not even a hint of them left.

Not even a hint.  Of course today the foreign gods people serve are not always worshipped in temples or sacrificed to at altars on some high mountain.  No, the foreign gods today are sacrificed to at our jobs, our extrra-curricular activities, banks, at casinos, on our computers and dare I say it?  Even on Facebook!!!  The list goes on and on.  No, I am not by any means suggesting that we go out and destroy the places or abstain from some of the activities I just mentioned.  I am simply saying is that if we don't have our hope fixed on the living God (1 Timothy 4:10), then we will very easily fall into idolatry if we allow some of these activities to separate us from God.

But why?  Why is it so important that we make an effort to get rid of any hint of a foreign god in our lives?  Well the fact is that if we don't they will become a snare or a stumbling block to us.  As we read on through the Old Testament we see that Israel actually failed to get rid of those foreign influences.  What it led to was them being separated from and in some cases forsaking God altogether.  Much of the time this does not happen overnight.  It happens a little bit at a time because we choose to make compromises.  Pretty soon we are no longer attending worship services and next thing we know, we find ourselves doing the things we vowed not to do anymore when we became Christians.  This is all because we did not "utterly destroy" any and every hint of foreign gods in our lives.

So my encouragement to you is simply this.  Is there something keeping you from being all you can be in the army of the Lord?  Figure out what you can do to take steps toward "destroying" that god in your life.  This might mean you have to shut off the television.  This might mean you have to stop hanging out with certain people.  It might mean you have to stop going certain places.  There are any number of ways we can "destroy" the foreign gods in our lives.  My prayer is that you keep your commitment to Christ.  But also if you have not yet made that commitment to Christ by obeying the gospel, do not delay because without doing so, there is no hope of salvation since the gospel is the power of God for salvation (Romans 1:16).

PRAY ABOUT IT! DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! LOVE Y'ALL! GOD BLESS!