1. How old were you when you first went to church?
2. How often does your family attend a gathering?
3. Do you feel like you are at church too much? Not enough? Or just about right?
My entire life, I have spent most Sundays at church. Those of you who have grown up going to church as a family, probably think you can relate to me. The truth is, most of you do not understand what a Sunday looked like for me as a kid.
When I was really young, my dad was involved in riding on a bus that picked up people for church every Sunday morning and I joined him most of the time. Then we would go to church and Sunday school. After that, it was “church” time. We would leave church and go to my grandparents’ house for dinner and play for a couple of hours before we went back to church. We got there early for my parents to go to choir practice. After practice, it was time for the Sunday evening service. When we finally got home, it was time for a quick supper and bed.
Needless to say, Sundays were busy for me. It became a ritual for me, something I had to do. Oh, I could always find ways to enjoy parts of the day but I only tolerated the important parts – the “church” parts.
4. Do you find yourself tolerating being at church?
At the beginning of time, God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:8). Later on, He made appearances to people. Then, He gave the Law, and in that, He commanded the people to set aside one day a week to do nothing but rest and spend time with Him (Exodus 20:8-11). Many years later, Jesus came and lived on Earth for 33 years. After that, it is recorded in the New Testament that we are to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).
Our God wants to spend time with us. Let me say it again. Our God wants to spend time with us.
5. Can you believe that the Creator of everything wants to spend time with you?
6. What does worship mean?
7. What does it mean to be jealous?
I want to give you the biblical definition for those words.
Worship is reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.
Jealous is intolerant of unfaithfulness or rivalry.
There are many places in the Bible that tell us to only worship God. The Law that I mentioned earlier is the famous Ten Commandments. The first two speak directly to this.
1. “You shall have no other gods before me.”
2. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” Exodus 20:3-6
Exodus 34:14 adds, “(for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God).”
Deuteronomy 4:24 says, “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.”
There are some words that we automatically associate with being bad or negative. “Jealous” is one of them. The reason we associate it with being bad is that we, humans, have a hard time being properly jealous.
8. Do you think people can be jealous without sinning?
God cannot sin, and therefore, when He says He is a jealous God, we can know that it is a good thing for Him to be jealous. When we give more attention to anything or anyone than we do to God, we are worshiping it. They are not idols in the same sense as the idols that the early Israelites came across or created, but they are still, in fact, idols.
Some of the idols that I struggle with are: watching soccer on TV, playing games on my phone, and building things in my workshop. There is not necessarily anything wrong with the activities that I listed, but if I spend my time doing these things and not spend time with God, then they are idols in my life.
9. What are things in your life that you sometimes allow to be idols?
10. Can you keep these things in your life without them being idols?
That last question is a tough one. This issue is one that you probably will need to talk to God about. If you ask Him, He will let you know what you need to cut out and what you can just cut back on. I pray that you will take this seriously and focus on spending more time worshiping our jealous God.