About CFC
Choose today whom you will serve
By Jonny and Sandra Keenan
29th January 2012 | Category: Join the Journey 2012
Key Verse
“Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go in to Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord “Let my people go, that they may serve me.”’
Main Content
Central Truth: Our God is a jealous God who yearns for our full affection.
Ten years ago today, George W. Bush first used the term “Axis of evil” in his State of the Union Address to describe the countries that the US considered their enemies. For the Jewish people in Egypt over 3,000 years ago, their enemy not only lived among them but enslaved them. Whereas the US considered war to free themselves of their enemies, the Jewish people looked towards their God, Yahweh, to deliver them.
As many have known since childhood, God used ten plagues to help deliver His people from the Egyptians. Yet some of these plagues affected the Jewish people as well. When the plague of frogs was sent, they invaded both the Jewish and Egyptian homes. Both people groups cried out for deliverance from the maddening croaking and rustling of the writhing mass of frogs.
So why did God allow His people to be inflicted this way? After four centuries of living in Egypt, the Egyptian idols had made their way into Hebrew households. Jews and Egyptians alike worshipped many false idols including the frog goddess Heket, and Yahweh was determined through the ten plagues to teach both groups that He alone was God and would He not share His glory with another.
Although frog goddesses might mean little to us in the 21st Century, we run similar risks today.
Idolatry is defined as a ‘blind or excessive devotion to something’. In our current culture that something can be family, career, power, fame, sex or materialism. Growing up in a world where ‘money is God’ affects us all. The Bible encourages us to be good stewards, to save and wisely invest so we can use our money to serve God’s Kingdom purposes.
But many of us may have unknowingly taken this ‘good’ thing and turned it into a ‘God’ thing. Instead of depending on God to look after us, we now depend on money for our security and contentment. As with Yahweh and the frog goddess, the current economic crisis has proved that money is not God, and many Christians may be hurting.
God would have us examine our hearts to determine if we have placed any false gods before Him, and if so to turn back to serve Him and fully trust in His sufficiency.
Consider:
God made us to be worshippers and so we all worship something. As you live this day consider whom you worship...is it God alone?
What are you putting your time and effort into doing today and what is occupying your thoughts? Is your number one priority serving God today, no matter what you are doing?
Jonny and Sandra Keenan
