the gods we worship

Here's a scary thought: "What you believe about God’s nature will largely determine how you live."

Most of us don’t live like we are free because we don’t believe in a God that loves us enough to give us the gift of freedom. Were bound, were grumpy, we hate so many things and we project that back onto God. Many see God as grumpy and angry and really angry at those who aren’t grumpy and angry. We have, and still, believe in false gods that rob us of our freedom and I would like to point out three:

The First Freedom Robbing God: Santa Claus god: This god is the one we believe in that will always keep us safe and that will always keep us happy, that will always keep us warm and well fed. The people who worship this god constantly try to appear happy, praising Jesus at every turn and often have a lot of cheep clichés to go along with it. That is until something real nasty happens in their lives. Many Christian teens worship this one particular false god.

Lord if you love me then you’ll do what I want. The reality is that God is sovereign and we need to accept his will for us no matter how we feel about it.

If god exists just to “bless us and our dreams” we will eventually turn away and create a new one. This leads to worship of the Child abuser god. The Second Freedom Robbing God is the child abuser god: this is the angry god that takes great delight in messing up your life. This is the God who gives sinners AIDS, and cancer and all kinds of diseases. There is much motivation by guilt when serving this god.

In Dan Allender’s book “Cry Of The Soul” he tells of Maria and her older brother that sexually abused her for eight years, and often sold her to his friends. The abuse stopped only when he was killed in a car wreck. Maria told her mother and her mother responded in anger telling her that if she ever spoke of it she would no longer be her daughter. Disappointment is real!

If we believe that God is my Father and He loves me without reservation and he knows exactly what he is doing it allows us to live in freedom.

The Third Freedom Robbing God: The absent god: This god is supposed to have started everything and walked away. Wind up the top and leaves. Deists believe this about their god.

If god walked away then just who was Jesus? Some crazed fruitcake that we should run from!

“No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known.” _{John 1:18}

In Christ we receive Jesus’ perfection the fancy name is “imputed righteousness” and the idea is that Jesus takes our sin and we get his perfection. In practical terms it also means that if you are a Christ follower God will never be angry with you again!!

So I have a question for you: If you really believed that God was good (not safe, but good) and that He had this mess under control, and that in Christ he never will be angry with you again, how would you live?
What kind of things would you change?

Live in Freedom! Follow Jesus Christ!

This entry is adapted from the second chapter of “A Scandalous Freedom” by Steve Brown and what I spoke on to the awesome students at the Cornerstone Church.
Thanks Kyle, Sean and Ryan for the pic. =]