Spiritual Ponderings

For the LORD your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who does not show partiality nor take a bribe. (Deuteronomy 10:17) Give thanks to the God of gods , For His lovingkindness is everlasting. (Psalms 136:2) I am continuing my pursuit of seeking to understand better the first commandment that says we should not have any other gods before the one true God. Last time I explored a little more of just what a god is all about to some extent and discovered that a god is anything or anyone that adds value to my life or helps to give me identity. Because that seems to be the fundamental purpose of a god and the reasons that people have invented gods throughout the history of the world, then given the way the first commandment is worded it would seem that there just may be a legitimate place for other gods in God's organization of creation. Aside from the fact that many false gods are terrible distortions of the truth about God and...

Where have all the gods gone? There seems to be a severe shortage of obvious false gods and idols around making people think that the first two commandments are nearly obsolete. Or are they? What does it really mean to bow down to them or worship them? We are created in the image of God. We were given authority over everything else in this world to act as God's representatives. A god is any source we look to as a means of supplying any of our needs, especially when our heart gets involved in that activity. The act of bowing is just an outward symptom of what our heart has already been doing for possibly a very long time. Bowing is to lower our head – the symbol of authority and the container of our identity as children of the King – to anything we look to that we have chosen as a source that we trust to supply something we need. In bowing we are lowering ourself and in contrast elevating that god higher than us in our estimation. "There also we saw the Nephilim (the sons ...

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me. (Exodus 20:2-3) About a week ago this text came strongly to my mind in a whole new way. A few days later I was talking with a friend and he told me that the very same thing had happened with him. I have always assumed and have been taught that this first of the Ten Commandments means that we should not have any others gods in our lives. In fact, in my mind it didn't make a lot of sense what the significant difference was between the first and the second commandment. The first talks about not having other gods and the second says not to worship images of other gods – a difference, but not all that much from my perspective. But now I am seeing something radically different in this verse I had never picked up on before. As I pondered the actual way in which it is stated and allowed it to speak for itself instead of jumping to the popular conclusi...

Criticism creates an atmosphere that distorts my perceptions of God. Criticism induces me into taking God's place as a judge of character. Criticism is based on false notions about how God deals with me. Criticism divides the power and influence of others in an attempt to debilitate them and give me an advantage. Practicing criticism engenders a picture of God who does to me what I am doing to others. Criticism poisons the life-giving atmosphere and spoils the nourishment engendered by praise and gratitude. Criticism is the counterfeit employment of my powers of discernment given to me as a gift originally intended for intercession. Criticism blinds me to my own faults while amplifying the faults of others. Thus it tends to skew my view of what is really going on. Criticism hardens my heart because it displaces love and compassion from my heart which are vital for keeping it thriving and tender. Criticism gives me a false thrill of 'righteousness' by measuring my own life...