and bad…

and scary,

even people who don’t love God will turn to him, pray to him, cry to him.  Because our souls know who he is even if our minds won’t acknowledge it.  He created us and the heart he molded inside of us cries out to its maker when we’re in significant trouble.

In Judges 10, the Israelites are on one of their downward spirals of sin.  They have stopped serving God and have started serving Baal…..again.  So God let the pagan kingdoms who also served Baal crush them and oppress them.

It was bad.

So the Israelites cried out to God and he replied, “Go and cry out to the gods you have chosen.  Let them save you when you are in trouble.”

Sometimes, as a Good Father who wants to teach us life lessons, God says that to us today.  If we have placed things other than God as our top priority, they are our gods.

There are situations where God lets us learn the hard way that money is not our security.  It disappears, it turns into a nightmare when we use credit, and the stuff we buy with it only makes us happy for a little while.  Have you and I learned this yet?

Relationships – people are flawed.  Unconditional love only comes from God.  My husband, my wife, my friends, my children cannot be my first priority.  God didn’t create it to work that way.  Have you and I learned this yet?

Careers – money, recognition, power, prestige often distract us from God.  Sadly, tragically, we can find that we were struggling so hard to climb a ladder that was up against the wrong wall.  At the end, there’s a huge, disappointing fall.  Have you and I learned this yet?

Anything we put before the One True God in our lives becomes a false god as we serve it and love it and focus on it.   These false gods will be no help when the bottom falls out of our lives.   Then our hearts will cry out to their Creator God just like the Israelite’s hearts did.

The Israelites had been taught well and they knew exactly what to do to get back in line with God.  They repented and got rid of their false gods.  And God responded by helping to deliver them from their enemies.  They still had to fight and struggle (consequences for their bad decisions) but God gave them victory.

God has told us he is a jealous God and he will not tolerate his people serving other gods.  When its big and bad and we need help, none of these false gods are going to of any use to us.

Have you and I learned this yet?

You are the only God in my life, Abba Father.