Stone of Help
I have two scriptures for you:
1 Samuel 7:3- “So Samuel said to the Israelites, ‘If you are returning to the Lord with all you hearts, then rid yourselves of the foreign gods and Ashtoreths and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve him only, and he will deliver you out of the hand of the Philistines.’”
Jeremiah 29:13- “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.”
As we press forward into the new year, I think it’s important to recognize those things that we exalted above the Lord, those things we gave more attention to, those things that we put the Lord on “pause” for, those people that we shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with but we did anyways, the blatant disobedience towards God, and the other authorities in our lives.
It’s important to recognize this and leave it there. I feel there’s an optimism in the atmosphere for 2019, but also a seriousness as well regarding the relationships we have with God. I can feel that God is getting tired of battling for our attention. It’s time we returned our hearts to the Lord. Starting today, we need to do two things:
Rid ourselves of our idols (current and past)
Commit ourselves to the Lord (and him alone)
When we think of idols, we might think of the golden calf. We physically think of building something. So, as long as we don’t build a golden calf and put it in our living rooms, we think that we’re not worshipping anything or anyone else. But we’ve been taught that an idol is anything we put above the Lord and his time. The worst thing about this is that we place God in the middle of the idols that we worship, and we expect him to be satisfied.
When the Philistines stole the ark of the covenant, they placed it in a temple next to their god, Dagon. There was no reverence for what the ark represented, there was no regard for the Holy Spirit. They believed it to be of the same level of their false god, but we know that no other man or idol can stand beside God, can stand above God, because He is the only God. And just as they came back those mornings and saw their god broken to pieces, the Lord wants us to do the same to any idol we’ve created. 2 Corinthians 10:5- Cast down those imaginations that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God.
We must then commit ourselves to serving God only. The ark went from Mizpah, to Ashdod, to Gaza, to Ashkelon to Gath, to Ekron, and in each place it brought devastation. It brought devastation because it was not where it belonged. They were not his chosen people. It had not been sanctioned to be there; something so holy was among these people who had not committed themselves to serving God alone, and it brought devastation to them.
The Lord said that we are like the Ark of the Covenant because wherever we go, he dwells within us. Wherever we go, we are a representation not of ourselves, but Christ through us. He said that so often we bring devastation upon ourselves because we choose to dwell among those to which we do not belong. We are going places, doing things that the Lord has not sanctioned us to do, and we have no reverence for the Holy Spirit and the role it has in our lives. And then, when we begin to get afflicted, we, like the Philistines, say, “Oh, the Lord’s hand is heavy upon us,” but we fail to realize what caused it in the first place. You can imagine that as a vessel that houses the spirit of the Lord, when are disobedient and our hearts are not towards God, and we fall into those old ways that we supposedly gave up, and we wine and dine with the wicked when we’re supposed to be living holy, some devastation is going to occur. And just as the Philistines sent the ark back, we, too, need to return to where we came from.
We might feel plagued, we might feel stuck, or we might have some things that we want the Lord to deliver us from this year. But how can God begin to do those things for us when we blatantly put things, people, and circumstances above him? How can we expect God to do good work for us when we’re filled with wickedness? Or when we rely on the words of others more than the word of God? The word says of the wicked in Proverbs 24:1, “Do not desire their company.” There is no one we need to be focusing on more than the Lord, especially the world. It doesn’t matter what idols they have to offer or whatever else you think you desire. Psalms 101:3 says, “I will not look with approval on anything that is vile. I hate what faithless people do; I will have no part in it.”
So, what are we going to do today? Are we going to remain as the faithless people and keep these idols we’ve created in our lives? Or are we going to heed what 1 Samuel 7:3 says? One might say it depends on how bad you want that deliverance.
1 Samuel 7:7 says that “When the Philistines (Phili-steens) heard that Israel had assembled at Mizpah, the rulers came to attack them. When the Israelites heard this they were afraid because of the Philistines (Phili-steens).” When we sin against God, and even after we repent, a small part of us is still worried that we’ll reap what we’ve sewed, we’re scared that that idol, or person, or thing, will come back to handle unfinished business, but the Lord is faithful and he’s mightier than any person, or thing that could try to come against you. He will surely deliver us from the mess we made ourselves!
In the end, whether or not we think we have idols in our lives, we need to consistently examine ourselves and our relationship with God. You might find something you didn’t know was there. I know we like to think we’re doing good and that there’s nothing to fix, but I’ve been humbled on many occasions where I thought I was being the best Christian I could be, and I wasn’t. There were some idols I had to tear down, I had to turn my heart back towards the Lord. So if you’ve been facing devastation, or you’ve carried the devastation into this new year, the Lord can and will deliver you.
Why?
Because it says so and because he did so for the Israelites.
He is and will forever be our stone of help. We are his chosen people, and the Lord wants to help us out of our devastation. Whatever you are seeking the Lord for, you will surely find him, as long as you seek him with all of your heart, but to seek him with all of our hearts, we must first return our hearts back to him. He no longer wants to be second or third to anyone or anything. If you’re looking to be delivered, the Lord is waiting to do so as long as we rid ourselves of those things we worship alongside or above God and we commit ourselves to serving him alone.
