I'm Worse Than I Thought

As most of you know, I have been attending Coram Deo regularly since the beginning of October.  This has been one of the best decisions in regards to spiritual formation.  Spiritual formation is a new term for me, I had always called it my "walk with Christ" or "growth in my faith", but it is something that Coram Deo does not take lightly.  They did an entire sermon series on it back in 2006, shortly after the church was started.  I have been making my way through the sermons on the website, though not in a particular order, and I am about half way done with the Spiritual Formation series.  I would highly recommend it to everyone.  Listen to them here.  If you only can listen to one, listen to Jesus' Master Principle.

I had always thought that if I really wanted to change my behavior and obey Christ (which I do) all I needed to do was to try harder.  If I just prayed about it more and tried really, really hard to stop, I could.  This approach has been an utter failure.  I have made very little progress.  While prayer and effort are important in the fight against sin and temptation, they are a band-aid for the real problem.

Bob Thune, pastor at Coram Deo, talks about how really our sinful behavior comes down to heart idols.  That sounds stranger than it really is.  Idolatry is replacing God in our lives with something or someone that we think would better fulfill a need that we should look to God to fulfill.  Matthew 12:33 is an illustration for this principle of looking to the tree (our heart) as to why there is bad fruit (sin in our lives) and that we need to change our heart to change our behavior.  While we are unable to change our heart on our own, or even at all, Scripture shows us that God uses our discipline as a means for Him to transform us.

Bob used lying as an example.  The heart idol behind it may be approval.  We seek other people's approval of us instead of God's approval of us.  We are wanting them to fill that void instead of having God complete us.  Therefore, the heart idol is other people's approval, because that idol should be replaced by God and God alone.  If we begin to find our approval in God and not other people, we will have less desire to lie.  This hit home because lying is one of my struggles.

I challenge everyone to listen to these sermons, or at least Jesus' Master Principle, and really look at the sins in your life and prayerfully consider what the heart idols behind them are.  I will be doing this and sharing on this blog what God reveals to me.  I hope you will do the same.