Then God spoke all these words, saying, “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.

“You shall not make for yourself any idol or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on earth beneath or in the water under earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.   Exodus 20:1-6 HCSB

I mentioned last week about the revival that I attended. It ended last Thursday night. Friday morning I began a bible study led by a dear friend from church. This study is the Charles Stanley study on spiritual discipline. One verse that we looked at last Friday was 1 Samuel 15:23 which says that rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft, and defiance is like wickedness and idolatry.

I basically spent Sunday-Friday of last week in some type of bible study, between revival and the Friday morning study in addition to my personal devotional time in the mornings. I woke up feeling pretty revived this morning, I must tell you. But as I began to pray God reminded me that I was hanging on to some idols. Ouch!!

I love the LORD my God with all my heart, all my soul, and all my mind. But, there is a but in there. I have things that I have failed to let go of and God pointed that out to me during my prayer time this morning. I have anger towards people when I should be seeing them the way that God sees them. I have resentment over people who have hurt those that I love. Now I could sit here with you and tell you why and I bet you would be saying something, like, “Yeah, I don’t blame you one bit.” I could probably even stir you up enough that you would have anger against these people as well. But what does God tell me to do about this?

Psalm 37:8 says refrain from anger, and forsake wrath! Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil. James 1:20 tells us that the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Ephesians 4:26  tells us that we should not sin while we are angry and we should not let the sun go down on our anger; in other words, get over it. James 1:19 tells us to be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger. Ephesians 4:31 tells us to let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with all malice. These are just a few.

Now some of you are saying, “Well, Jesus became angry”. Yes, He did, but His was righteous anger. He was angry because people were mistreating God’s temple. And the big point that we should remember here is even though He became angry, He did not sin.

Now I love it when God’s plan comes together. Yesterday, we had a guest pastor, Brother Chris Chavers, and as always he did a fine job of bringing God’s message to us. He spoke of being still and waiting for God’s answer. He spoke of how we must be obedient to God in order to receive His blessing. Friday in our bible study, we learned that obedience is the foundation of our Christian lives. We must first be obedient.

I’ve been praying for solutions to these problems this week, but I got nothing. Now this morning just before I prayed I received notification on my phone that my friend, Pamela had created an image for the verse mentioned in our bible study, 1 Samuel 15:23. This is when I realized through prayer that my anger had become my idol. I had not given it over to God. I had not been obedient and I had not been trusting Him to resolve these issues. This is why God had not given me an answer. Ouch, I hate when that happens!

I ask you today to search your heart and your mind, are you holding on to an idol? I would have been spinning my wheels had God not revealed this to me this morning. If I had not spent so much time in prayer and Bible study the last week, I might have missed it. We serve a jealous God. He wants our full attention, not some half-baked, when we can get around to it, repetitious service. He wants it all. He wants to be the focus of our lives and he wants anyone looking at us to see Him through us. How’s that working for you?

Re-read our scripture passage. We are told that God will visit the iniquity to the third and fourth generation for those that are disobedient and worship other gods, but he will show loving kindness to those that love Him and keep His commandments.

Today marks three years ago that our former pastor and beloved shepherd passed away. I miss him terribly as I’m sure all those who knew him do. I thank God for the influence that he had on my life and those of my loved ones who were called to salvation under his loving guidance.

One week ago today we lost a dear church member that lived a life that exemplified God’s love. She was very dear to our hearts and will be missed terribly.

As these people are called to glory, we must carry on their work. We must honor their lives by obedience to God. We must remove all of our idols, even those that we didn’t realize we were worshiping like anger and slander and malice. We must teach the generations that are coming behind us what God’s love looks like. Won’t you join me today in asking God to remove anything that gets in your way of loving and serving Him?

Have a great day!