Our faith idols do matter!

When Peter and John were beaten by the temple leaders for proclaiming the name of the lord, they were joyful as they were counted worthy enough to be prosecuted for the Lord’s sake. As it is written and preached by the Lord himself, those who are prosecuted for the lord’s sake should be joyful as their reward is abundant in heaven. Following in the feet steps of the lord, whom they idealize as a measure of perfection, they did not cry about the prosecution but remembered that they are counted worthy enough to share the suffering of the lord for his namesake.  

 

The faith idol of those giants was Jesus himself. For us, Jesus is not a very close person as his history on earth is more than 2000 years old and we are too lost from Jesus’s perfection. As a result, though our goal is to imitate Jesus in every way, we often need intermediate and operational targets to aim at as our temporary idols. In this process, if we idolize rich and successful persons of God, we will develop toward them. Our choice, preference, endurance, and struggle will follow in their footstep.

 

If we idolize those who are prosecuted for the name of the lord and who pay and are still paying for the lord's sake, all our choices, preferences, endurance, and struggles will follow in their footstep. If we idolize politically powerful and wealthy persons of God and faithful, the same flow of choice, preference, endurance, and struggle will follow. The difference between faithful is often the result of the difference in their loved idols.

 

If your idols are those who are prosecuted, hunted, and killed for the lords’ sake, suffering will not be a problem; prosecution will not be an issue; and earthly comfort will not be a serious issue. What matters the most is the gospel, the great commission, and the discipleship of the faithful. When suffering and prosecution happen, it is a joyful time because you are counted worthy of the giants’ league. This is the golden standard of our faith, where soldiers are made for spiritual welfare in the name of the lord.

 

If what you idealize is the rich and successful persons of God, you will have the additional luggage of the need to be rich and successful. You will not measure success by the dispersion of the gospel, success of the great commission, and discipleship of the faithful toward the image of the lord only but also by your wealth and personal success as a person of God. This is heavy luggage to carry on and unless your spirit is well-built to keep you safe from all temptations, there is a high chance you could end up in the wrong places and wrong spirits.

 

If you further have additional luggage to be dominant, powerful, and a powerhouse of the world, you are pushing yourself toward the dark side and the evil one. The world is a gift, everything in the world belongs to God. God is the ruler of everything in everywhere. God does not have a problem of dominance, and power, he has a problem that people do not know right (God) from wrong (devil, earth, and flesh), and he loves this lost world.

 

God, therefore, does not need another earthly idiot fighting for power and dominance, he needs people who preach the word and who live by the word. He needs people who proclaim Jesus is lord not only by shouting “Jesus is lord” but by living his commandments too. After all listening and obeying God is more important than any sacrifice and service that we can offer to God. What God needs is people who listen and who obey him. He needs King David, not King Saul.

 

When you listen and obey God, the world is a gift. The gift that God gives you also depends on the time and the prevailing conditions. When the Eth-Tigray war was going on, having any food to keep ourselves and our children alive was more than enough gift that we were very thankful to God. It was a great gift because life is more than delicious food, as the lord was able to sustain our life when survival was an unsolvable puzzle to us at that time. The manna of the desert was a great gift from God to keep the children of Jacob alive, but those fools were not thankful and they paid for it. There is time to have the promised son, and there is time to wait for decades in anguish for the promised child. There is a time to hide from place to place running from the crazy king, there is time to be anointed as king. In the desert your life is your gift, in the day of victory, the kingdom is the gift. There is proper time for all kinds of gifts of God. It is wisdom to know there is time for everything. Besides, if you are in the best of the best league of God, your reward could be completely stored in heaven.  

 

You listen and obey God, and the world is a gift, therefore, does not mean you become the wealthiest tyrant of the lord, it means if you obey the lord the muster seed will become a giant tree that will provide shelter even to birds over time. This means slowly King Saul would decline and King David would rise, without King David putting his hand on King Saul. It is not a competition between two earthly Kings for power and dominance, but good defeating evil, light defeating darkness, and heaven defeating earth. Darkness is defeated by light, hate is defeated by love, and the world and the devil are defeated by Jesus.

 

That is why a faithful does not fight for wealth, success, power, dominance, and higher sit on an assembly of non-believers; he fights for the word of God and the commandment of God to be planted in the heart of all lost souls. If they prosecute him/her, it has to be for the word of God. If they kill him/her, it has to be for the word of God. Word of God and God is what is worth dying and suffering for.

 

Even if you are the majority to exercise power and naturally you can exercise biblical laws, you should not be power hungry foolish tyrant who oppresses others. Look to Jesus and ask what Jesus is doing now. He conquers the lost souls not by power but love, not judgment but mercy. They are on the dark side and they stumble naturally, but we have to know better as we are on the light side. We do not defeat their darkness by our darkness but by the lord’s light. They hate us, we love them. They prosecute us, we support them. They insult us, we smile at them. We show them we are different species from heaven to conquer them toward heaven. 

In this process our idols do matter. We need to idolize the life, teaching, and death of the lord as the final goal. Then we need to idolize other giants of the faith as intermediate and operational targets. Yet, those giants are tools while the ultimate goal is to imitate Jesus in word and teaching. Now ask, what kind of life did Jesus and those giants live? Idealize it and you will disarm the devil as a result. After all, all those who say lord … lord will not make it to heaven, but those who listen to the commandment of the lord and who exercise it. Those are founded on the right cornerstone in both Earth and Heaven.