Seeing is (Not) Believing

When all the people of Israel saw the fire come down and the glory of the LORD on the temple, they bowed down with their faces to the ground on the pavement and worshiped and gave thanks to the LORD, saying, “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever.”

(2 Chronicles 7:3 ESV)

What’s in your worship? From time to time we have to stop and take account of what we are actually worshipping in our lives. Do I worship the true and living God or something else? Am I focused on the person of Jesus Christ or some other thing? Some idolatry is obvious; greed, covetousness, carnal lust and infatuation with the things of this world are clear-cut idolatry. But the Christian who begins to go deeper in his faith will uncover other more nefarious types of idolatry. Here are a few ‘sinking sand’ pits I have to watch out for.

Sinking Sand #1: My Holiness

We can become so focused on our own walk, our own ‘fitness’ for the Kingdom that our Christianity becomes an idol. We begin to base our standing with God on how ‘Christiany’ we are becoming. On a day when I feel particularly pious, I will feel very close to God. If I fall into sin, I feel far away. 

My performance is a very poor indicator of my relationship to God because I am intrinsically flawed. If we have been Christians for a long time, we can become detached from the reality of our sinful nature and that detachment can lead us to the illusion that we are above that sinful nature. We begin to become dependent on our own personal holiness instead of God. And because we use personal holiness as a barometer of our relationship with God, we feel that that relationship is in a state of ebb and flow that does not truly exist.

Sinking Sand #2: My Doctrine

We can base our relationship with God on the soundness of our doctrine. This has the effect of cementing certain doctrines in place, making our attitude one of “we will not be, we will not be moved”.  Doctrine is a good thing, but is still a human thing. Scripture is often far more other-worldly than our minds are able to conceive, so good doctrine should be in a continual state of flux. We should never build walls around scripture – it must be free to speak as it will into our lives and the lives of others.

Because doctrine is a continuously unfolding thing, I must be careful not to base my relationship to God on it in too strict terms. If I do, I will not remain flexible enough to accept changes in my thinking as I grow in the knowledge of God and I will put God in a box.

Sinking Sand #3: ‘My’ Fruit

Yep. We can become infatuated with fruit-bearing. Bearing the fruit of the Spirit is a wonderful thing, but if we begin to keep records and push to produce more, we have wandered off track. From there it’s a short step to “God owes me”.

The instant that fruit becomes the focus of our lives, it ceases to be fruit. Fruit of the Spirit is, by definition, a by-product of a relationship with God. If it becomes the focus then it is no longer fruit but works.

The True Glory

There is one thing that all idols have in common; they have no constancy. My holiness wanes and surges. My doctrine changes and grows. My works can bring pride or burnout. If we are like the Israelites and wait for the visible glory of God to appear in the temple before we worship Him, we are not worshipping Him at all, but his manifestation.

There is a way to truly detect if I am in right relationship to God. Ask yourself this question, “Can I be shaken from this place?” When flood waters come, will they be able to knock you from your foundation? If your foundation is your holiness, sin will knock you down. If your foundation is doctrine, truth will knock you down. If your foundation is fruit, inability will knock you down. All of these and more are merely sinking sand.

But when you get below all of this to the God from whom it flows, you will find solid rock. When you become founded on that which is not manifest in this world, nothing in this manifested world will be able to knock you down. You will be holy because your foundation is holy, even though the structure above may be flawed. You will accept truth because your foundation is truth, even if you have to completely remodel the house. You will bear fruit because your foundation is the root, not because you want to impress God and others with how nice your house is.

Martin Luther once said, “God in incomprehensible and invisible. Therefore, what may be seen and comprehended, that is not God”. If we build our lives on what we see and comprehend, even if what we see and comprehend is the glory of God, we are not in relationship with God himself. We are idolizing His manifestation.

True relationship with God begins with the fact that He loved you, not that you loved Him, were holy, subscribed to sound doctrine or bore magnificent fruit. He never changes. He established a day in history on which he abolished sin and death and fulfilled His own requirements for righteousness through Jesus Christ. God, who is unconstrained by time and space, chose to act a particular hour in a particular place on behalf of all mankind.  Why? So we could base our relationship with him upon fact if we would only believe; even those of us who have never seen Him. Not seeing is truly believing.

God Bless