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Chess and Surrender to God: The King is Infinity Points
We sometimes imagine surrender to God as emotional starvation. Every pleasure feels suspicious, and every passion feels in competition with our love of God. We think that the more miserable we are in ... -
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Joy’s Trick
Joy’s trick is to supply Dry lips with what can cool and slake, Leaving them dumbstruck also with an ache Nothing can satisfy. -
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We make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. So find your joy in God and be done with all idolatry. -
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There was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he ... -
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A possession ought to belong to the possessor, not the possessor to the possession. -
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Earthly goods are given to be used, not to be collected.... Hoarding is idolatry. -
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The Charm of Beauty is to Win Hearts
Recently, when I was in London, I went to the National Gallery. It was a weekday, but it was still crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at famous paintings, listening to a narrator explain th... -
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Great needs grow from great possessions. -
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You Can Do Better
In his excellent book, The Magnificent Story , James Bryan Smith shares this short little anecdote from the world of bumper stickers. While funny, it also brings up the commonplace idolatry that ... -
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Our comforting conviction that the world makes sense rests on a secure foundation: our almost unlimited ability to ignore our ignorance. -
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The heart clings to collected treasure. Stored-up possessions get between me and God. Where my treasure is, there is my trust, my security, my comfort, my God. Treasure means idolatry. -
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Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols. -
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The Downside to Idols
Suppose my god is sex or my physical health or the Democratic Party. If I experience any of these under genuine threat, then I feel myself shaken to the depths. Guilt becomes neurotically intensified ... -
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A glutton is one who raids the icebox for a cure for spiritual malnutrition. -
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Addiction & Idolatry
In his excellent book on the subject of power (Playing God), author Andy Crouch describes the connection between idolatry and addiction: In modern, secular societies perhaps the clearest example of ... -
lectionary
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
Preaching Commentary Different Levels of Maturity? There is an interesting dynamic I have noticed that often occurs as people begin to mature into adults. In my life it was a stage that took place ... -
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Subtraction Stew and Fulfillment: The Phantom Tollbooth
In The Phantom Tollbooth , there is a special kind of food called “subtraction stew.” Produced by a mathemagician, this stew makes you hungrier after you’ve eaten it. Our three main characters don’t ... -
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Our Loves Can’t Hold the Weight of our Expectations
The ultimate reason for our misery, however, is that we do not love God supremely. As Augustine so famously put it in prayer, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they fin... -
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Nothing enslaves more than that which we think we cannot live without. -
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Transferring Our Hope
Idols are dangerous when a worshiper, having lost patience in God, transfers his hope and joy into a deity represented by a handmade thing and cries to it: “Awake and arise!” In this move, human antic... -
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Idolatry in a Postmodern Age
In Easter Everywhere: A Memoir, Darcey Steinke recounts how she, the daughter of a Lutheran minister, left her Christian profession. Moving to New York City she entered a life of club hopping and se... -
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Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship. -
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The Ring of Desire
The central plot device of The Lord of the Rings is the Dark Lord Sauron’s Ring of Power, which corrupts anyone who tries to use it, however good his or her intentions. The Ring is what Professor To... -
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Drinking from Cups that Hold No Water
Humanity is thirsty for God, but we drink from cups that can hold no water. We draw well water and find that we are thirstier after we drink our fill. It is the water of self-hatred and rejection. It ... -
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A Day in the Market
I’d like us to begin with a little scene setting. So, I’m going to invite everyone who is comfortable to close their eyes. And I am transporting you to Rome, it’s approximately 60 AD. You are a commo... -
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This Blasted Smartphone!
Tony Reinke does a great job capturing the deep ambivalence many of us feel about our smartphones in this short excerpt: This blasted smartphone! Pesk of productivity. Tenfold plague of beeps and ... -
liturgy
Inspired by Judges 2
Pastor: Oh God, you have been so gracious to us. You have given us so many wonderful gifts—they outnumber the stars in the sky! You have kept your promises to us, and you have been faithful! All: But ... -
liturgy
Adapted from Psalm 135:15-18
All: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breat... -
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You Become What You Worship
Two golden rules at the heart of spirituality. You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character o... -
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An idol is anything or anyone that receives my primary focus of both my energy and my resources, which should first of all, belong to God.
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