Creating false Idols

How easy it is to do this, even when you don't think you do!

This has been spoken into me the last week as I spent one night in Mississauga at the Leadership Training time through our church. We all think this would be easy to follow as there is only one god and should not idolize others. We do however do it in our everyday life and may not realize it until it is brought to our own attention both intentionally or not. The message Wednesday night was not made for me, but was obviously given to Chris to speak about because someone there needed to hear it.

The Victoria day long weekend, I participated in the Canadian National Championships in ten pin bowling. I realized that those there were there because they are some of the best in Canada, but what I did was put them above myself even though I deserved to be there as well. Yes some of these guys have been seen on TV which may have helped me think they were more deserving of the attention, but my dreams that I see have me winning tournaments against some great bowlers. I believe that by allowing my self to think that these bowlers were more important that myself, I went against the plan of god. Then as I was unable to clearly think I made many mistakes on the lanes which caused me to miss the cut and ultimately the National team.

We are given dreams by god, he wants us to have to dreams to see what is possible through him, if we try to make our own dreams based on others successes we are trying to do things on our own strength not his strength. We are worshipping what others have or have done not what we have or can do ourselves with faith. This could be something as simple as a friend who has a better house, you want to be as good or better than them instead of finding what gods has for us. I now know that my dreams are his dreams for me, he knows what I am capable of and instead of looking at what others have done and accomplished, I need to only remind myself that what I am going to do will be far better than that.

If athletes are thinking, I want kids to say I want to be just like so and so, they need to see that yes they have a great talent, but people need to see themselves as themselves, that is they way god created them and that is how he will see them. He will not give Pro Athletes a better version of heaven as there is only one. He will not give them more attention because of status on earth, he loves all his children.