Free to Love God

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:2–6

You were born to worship and you do worship. What is on your mind all the time is your idol; it is what you adore. But you need to adore Jesus Christ. So we’ve established that you will give your heart, soul, mind, and strength to something—and that is worship. In fact, you could even call it addiction. But, again, you were born to do this, so, actually, being addicted is normal. And I am not asking you not to be addicted. I am asking you to be addicted to something that can love you back, and there is only One who can do that—our heavenly Father through Jesus Christ, His Son.

We have learned something. Hurting God’s heart and causing Him to be jealous are sin. Now we can look for what the Bible has to say about sin or idolatry, something we had no idea we were committing. The first place to stop is the sixth chapter of Romans. It says, What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! Romans 6:1–2a. The Bible says by no means. They were discussing the very thing we are discussing two thousand years later! The question is still, What does God expect from us? Let’s continue reading:

We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin. Romans 6:2b–7

So when we come to the Father through Jesus Christ, we die to our old lovers and say yes to our new love, God Almighty. We are free from sin—in other words, free to love God.

For more, read Rise Above.