Then Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. For as I was passing through and observing your objects of worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD.

It’s not about the religion, it’s about the relationship. Yesterday, we spoke about seeking God and maintaining a close relationship with Him. In Athens, Paul found those that were worshiping idols. Now before you look down your nose at these people for doing such a horrendous thing, what do you worship? What kind of religion are you involved in? Are you in the religion of money? Do you follow all the rules of saving and investing wisely, but fail to tithe because you think you can’t afford that? Do you work every Sunday because you have to make more money to pay for all the things that you have spent money on that you couldn’t afford? Does that beautiful home that you have keep you out of church and take up time that could be spent in Bible study and praying to do the endless upkeep? Do those big fancy toys you bought, like maybe your shiny new boat, keep you too busy to have a relationship with the Lord?

You don’t have to spend a lot of time around someone to determine who or what they worship. Just look at where there money and their time goes.  That will tell you all you need to know. Let’s stop right here and do a self assessment before we start to look at others?

Let’s start with your time. How do you spend the majority of your time? In this day and age of technology, it is not hard to determine how we spend our time. Our cell phones keep track of how long we spend on the screen each day and what we do while we are there. Our phones tell us how long we spend in conversation. Our computers keep time of how long we are on there. My Bible App tells me how many days in a row that I logged in.  So, how do you spend your time? One big clue might be if you know everything that’s going on with everyone in your social media circle, but have no clue what is going on at your house or at God’s house.

How do you spend your money? Is your house bigger than you need? Did you spend way more than necessary to furnish and decorate it? What about your car? Did you spend a bit more than you could afford because the salesman convinced you that you could afford that much according to your credit report? Are you working vast amounts of overtime to try to pay for all these luxuries? Do you convince yourself that you can’t afford to tithe? Perhaps you are telling yourself that you will tithe when you get some of these bills caught up. Well, let me tell you that if you want God to help you with your money, you have to honor God with your money, but that’s a whole other blog for another day.

Are you spending all of your spare time trying to work because you have spent way more money than you make and now you are trying to catch up? If so, maybe your religion has become one of endless working and spending money. Maybe you are worshiping material things. Wait a minute, isn’t that what they were doing in Athens? They had built these fancy statues and were worshiping them. That’s crazy, right?

I hope that you are very clear on who or what you are worshiping? We can also worship other people. We can allow other people to get in the way of our relationship with our Lord and Savior. No good can come of this, just so you know.

There was a time in my life when I worshiped material possessions and when I spent my time and money on having fun and trying to enjoy myself. In the end, I realized that this only left me feeling empty. It left a void that could not be filled with material goods. Once I sought God and turned to Him and began to live under his mercy and love and protection, I found true peace and joy.

We were made to be in fellowship with God, we were made to worship Him. When we fail to do this, our lives become unbalanced and chaotic. If you are tired of living with chaos and turmoil in your life, then take a step back and stop to think about who or what you truly worship. If there are things that are distracting you or getting in your way of having a good solid relationship with Jesus, you need to remove those distractions. Turn to God, our scripture passage tells us that He is never far from us. God is waiting for you to seek Him. Trust me, He will be easily found when you reach out to Him.

Have a great day!