The Desert - Part 2

4. Search your heart for idols.

This is the tough one. In the Hosea 2 passage, God says, In the desert, I will make the Valley of Achor a door of hope … I will remove the Baals from her lips; no longer will their names be invoked.”

The Valley of Achor is where Achan buried forbidden treasure from Jericho in his tent. And the Bible tells us that Achan’s disobedience was the cause of Israel’s defeat at Ai (in Joshua 7). There is a powerful spiritual principle here: Achan’s grip on forbidden things caused God to lift His hand from His chosen people. Just as in the Valley of Achor, we must make a ruthless search for idols, for things in our possession that God has ordered us to destroy.

Jonah 2:8 says, “Those who cling to worthless idols forfeit the grace that could be theirs.” The question to ask ourselves in the desert season is ~ “Am I holding onto anything that is causing me to forfeit the fullness of God’s grace in my life?”

An idol can be anything we put between ourselves and the Lord. Idols are the things we sacrifice to. For example, some people sacrifice moral purity to idols of immoral relationships. We sacrifice to idols of indecent entertainment. We sacrifice our families to idols of career or power. Achan sacrificed his life to an idol of worldly wealth. Are you sacrificing to any of those idols?

But idols can also be the remnants from your past you’re still holding on to. An idol can be something that somebody said about you which has become the filter through which you see all of life – it has become a place of bitterness or a place to find fulfillment and approval. All done for the wrong reasons.

An idol can be a grudge, because you’re allowing the person who hurt you to come between you and the fullness of God’s grace in your life. An idol can also be the face that’s looking right back at you in the mirror. Maybe you’ve become God, making your own calls, running your own life. Your greatest desire is to control everything and everyone.

Are you clinging to a worthless idol? 2 Kings 17:15 says, They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.

How do you get rid of an idol? By starving your passion for it. You starve an old passion by feeding a new passion. If you’ve ever just tried to quit something cold turkey, you know it’s not that easy. Sometimes the stories of people who have smoked 3 packs one day, accepted Christ the next and quit without ever having another craving leads us to doubt ourselves. Those are rare stories, not the usual.

What we must do is fill ourselves with what is good, and that is God. It is a longing a deep desire for God in our lives, and that by the way is what we’ll be talking about starting next week . . . our need for the love of Christ in our lives. Without it, and without a daily infusing of Christ, we’re helpless in the world. This one issue is what I believe is the big problem. More about that next week – commercial’s over.

We need to feed a new passion by giving it our attention. That new passion can only be one thing, and it is not a thing it is a relationship with God, period. That is what will help you move out of the desert as you let go of whatever idols you’re holding onto. When you feed your passion for God, you starve your passion for worthless idols. When you release your grip on worthless idols, your hands become available to receive more of what God wants for you.