Remove the Air

 

Good morning to you

I have an illustration for you. If I have a bowl with water and want to submerge a small glass bottle in the water so it would stay down, what do I need to do? If I push it down to the bottom with the cap closed, would it stay there if I let go of it? No, it would pop up. It's as if it doesn't want to stay in the water. But if I remove the cap and then push it down, what happens then? It gets filled with water and stays down - it becomes one with the water in the bowl. What happened here? The air in the bottle kept the bottle from being submerged. Air and water don't get along, so in order for the bottle to get filled with water, the air first needed to be removed.

 

We are like that bottle and the water in the bowl represents the Lord. We want to serve the Lord, but we don't want to sacrifice our own desires and the demands of the flesh. This results in us not really being able to become one with the Lord. We keep on popping out to do our own thing, don't we? When it comes to being one with the Lord, having Him fill your life, you need to continuously remove from your life everything that is not of the Lord - the air that causes the bottle to keep popping up. Just as air and water don't get along, God does not get along with impurity and carnality, which is why He first had to birth you again before He could live in you, and which is why the Bible put so much emphasis on us having to remain pure. Jesus has gone to the trouble to list all those things in the Bible so we could know what to work at. Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God, (2 Corinthians 7:1) The end result is oneness with the Lord, moving in His power.

“I am the LORD your God… You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol… (Exodus 20: 3-5).”

What is a god? It’s something/somebody to be worshipped. We worship the living God. What is an idol today? It is something we worship instead of God. What is worship? The dictionary states that it’s an expression or thoughts of awe, joy, satisfaction and fulfilment to a being as a result of the effect the being has on one. It is also taking comfort in that effect.

In the previous post, I shared about my idols. Ignoring the demands of those idols of my flesh put much pressure on me. My spirit-man knew it was wrong, but my flesh-man wanted it. I was, therefore, unable to ignore it for long, since the power of the desire became too strong after a while. For comfort sake, I would then submit to the temptation just to have peace. It, therefore, became my god, for I went to it for peace instead of to the Lord. It controlled me. Like I said in the previous post, it was only when I denounced it that God got control again.

What are the idols in our lives? The devil is not stupid and knows he has to be subtle – turn up the heat slowly. He introduces idols that appeal to the nature of man. The three basic sins to man were those which Adam and Eve, as well as Jesus, were tempted with – a lust for power, material goods and pleasure. That’s exactly what we’re tempted with. The list is endless, but the tricky ones for Christians are those Jesus warned us against especially in the Sermon on the Mount (see the earlier posts). One of the biggest culprits for individuals is television entertainment. Can you think how much time for evangelism, ministry and hearing from the Lord we waste in front of the box? 

To the church, the idols can be very subtle. We can worship the pastor, our position in the church, the lovely liturgical traditions, and ourselves. We also take the glory that belongs to the Lord for ourselves, don’t we? Oh, we do pretend the Lord gets the glory, but what is in our hearts? What does the Lord hear when we sing worship? Is it ‘how great is our God’ or is it ‘I wonder what people think of me now’? The Lord sees and hears the heart.

Shall we tell the devil as Jesus did in Matthew 4:10? “Be gone, Satan! I shall worship the Lord my God and him only shall I serve (paraphrased).”

Thank you for helping us, Lord.