Not Always What We Think

Have you ever just started to read something or hear something (book, blog, radio broadcast...) and you were thinking, "Wow, I really like what I'm hearing (reading, seeing,). This is exactly how I think about this!" When all of a sudden....ALARM!!! The similarity comes to a dead stop! You realize whatever you're reading, hearing, or seeing is not at ALL what you subscribe to, but in fact something you are very much an OPPONENT of? This has happened to me more than once, I can assure you. In fact, it just happened tonight. I was checking out Homeschooling Curriculum for next year, and happened to read through some comments on the website for my current curriculum. I found myself agreeing with one mom, then followed a link to her own blog where I found under her biographical description category "Religion" "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints" and "What is Mormonism?" I was shocked, I must say. How can this mom think so similarly to me on some things (even down to the music that was being podcast on her blog) and yet be so far from me theologically? Why is she even using the curriculum I'm using? It's not a "Mormon" curriculum! From the outside, she seems like another church mom I'd swap ideas with, share homeschool info. with and want to have over to catch up on what God is doing in her life. I'm not saying I still couldn't do those things to some extent, but her beliefs about the Savior I love and adore are fundamentally opposed to the truth of the gospel. I wonder if she knows this. Has she sought out the scriptures for the truth that is revealed, or has she blindly believed lies told to her? I don't know. But I can pray for God's grace to let the scales fall from her eyes. This is so strange to think about. So similar to me in outward things, yet so far in the truth. It just goes to show that appearances aren't always what they seem. It also tells me that it's only the grace of God that keeps me from being a false worshipper.

I just started reading the new Bob Kauflin book, Worship Matters, yesterday. Really good. It is provoking me to think about worship and idolatry. We are all worshipping something. What is our "functional" god? What are we orienting our lives around? Is it God and His gospel, or a false "god" and it's "gospel?" A gospel of works, a gospel of success, a gospel of personal fulfillment or happiness. Where do our minds travel when we have a free minute? What do we turn to when our minds are left unoccupied for a second? Anything and everything can try to fill that place in our lives. Keeping Christ at the center of our lives does not happen by osmosis. It is a daily choosing, a daily yielding. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it is a daily choice to yield to the Holy Spirit. A daily choice to not have any other god before the one True God. To think that only by God's grace are we kept from stumbling into "another gospel" is humbling. But for the grace of God, I might be the one with my religion listed as Mormonism. We are all prone to follow a false god. Look at Aaron and the golden calf!! His brother is literally a short mountain climb away, meeting with the Mighty God, and down below, good old Aaron is crafting an idol for the people so they can have something to worship til Moses gets back. If this doesn't lay it out for us, nothing will. We are all like the people at the foot of that mountain. We are so desperate to worship something, we will accept the most ridiculous imitation. And we do it all the time. We run to food for comfort, to money for security, to people for acceptance, and to our own understanding for counsel. This is all idolatry. May God deliver us from the sin that lurks in our own deceptive hearts, that we might be true to Him.

"Keep me safe, O God, for in you I take refuge. I said to the Lord, 'You are my Lord; apart from you I have no good thing....I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."