"No Idols Before Me"

This posting is a companion to the post titled.......Iron Sharpens Iron.
The second lesson that I learned in marriage is: God must be EVERYTHING to me!
No man, no matter how awesome and godly he is, will ever be able to love me the way Jesus does. He will never be able to take the place of God; and biblically speaking, God will never allow it to be so. I have a guy who loves Jesus, and he is a wonderful husband, and father. Being blessed with a husband like this is one of the best gifts from the Lord!!
As I write this, I am reminded of Job. God gave Job many blessings, many gifts, and then He allowed them to be taken away. For what reason? For the purpose of refining Job, for the purpose of removing from Job's heart the impurity of pride. Also, Job had an incorrect view of God, and of the blessings that He gives. God wanted the best for Job, and He wants the best for me. God gives me blessings because He loves me, and because He loves me, He can take them away! I must never put the gift above the Gift-Giver!
I have found that God is faithful to His word, He will always give what He has promised. God said that He would not share His rightful place in my life with anyone! No idols at all on the throne of my heart will be tolerated. The beautiful gift of Mitch and my marriage, can be an idol to me; and today, as I write this, I will tell you that I still fight this on a daily basis. Here recently, I allowed this to happen again, and it was not a pretty sight!
I have discovered a curious thing about idolatry. We want so badly for the person we have idolized to love us, and to notice us, to serve us....to do something for us! We have this overwhelming need to be validated by this person; and if this doesn't happen, we wind up despising the one we had so loved before. Please, I don't mean to say that I fall in and out of love with my man. What I am saying is that if I am idolizing my husband, God will make sure to show me the error of my ways, and He does that by showing me my "idol's" feet of clay.
Idolatry is something that we in today's society are not as familiar with as the people of long ago were. I think that I can safely say that most of us haven't gone down to our local shopping mall and purchased a gold or silver figure of some god, and then brought it home and set up a center of worship to it in our home. I do realize that there are many cultures and peoples who do just that, but in America we don't see it as much. But, the practice of idolatry is something all of us can get into to, even Christians.
Idolatry in it's basic form is: Worship of false gods, it is the blind or excessive devotion to something, and reverence for some person or thing. An idolater is a slave to the ideas that the idol represents. Basically an idol is something that replaces the One True God! Idolatry extends beyond the worship of idols and images and false gods. I may not bow physically before a statue, but what I have discovered is that idolatry is a matter of my heart. Idolatry is anything that I become a slave to. It is allowing anything, or anyone the" place" in my life, that belongs to the Lord alone. So, what is this "place" that I am speaking of? First, it is my mind/heart. So often the Bible intertwines these two words, it is easy for us to misunderstand what is being spoken of. May I share with you a very basic explanation of the difference between the two?
The mind is the place where we "think," where we reason, where we make decisions. And the heart is the place where we "feel." It is the emotional part of us. Jesus said that out of the mind/heart come evil thoughts and then come evil actions. Therefore, if my mind and my heart are controlled by my flesh, then it is safe to say that I will be living, acting in my flesh. This to me is idolatry. Why? Because I am being a slave to my flesh, I am letting my flesh tell me what to do, instead of the Lord. The way that I think about things will determine how I act about things.
If I keep my honey in his proper place in my heart, then godly actions in my marriage will follow. Also, because I am keeping God in His rightful place in my heart/life, I have the assurance of His promises. The promises of grace and mercy, and of peace and love.......the promises to meet all of my needs. And truly, no man (no matter how wonderful) can promise that!