Scripture

Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.

~I John 5:21, NLT

Quote

Whatever you love more than Jesus is your idol.

~ Dwight L. Moody

David dreamed of building God a Temple and God allowed his son Solomon to built a temple but as Paul said in the introduction of his Athens sermon,  “He {Yahweh} is the God who made the world and everything in it. Since He is Lord of heaven and earth, He doesn’t live in man-made temples, and human hands can’t serve his needs—for he has no needs. He himself gives life and breath to everything, and he satisfies every need.” You and I know that Jesus was God’s perfect Temple but of course, the Jews missed this very important fact because they worshipped the shadow {man made temple} and ignored the substance {Jesus}. Be that as it may, the Gentile {unbelievers} invaded Jerusalem and desecrated the temple by filling it with idols. In fact some of Judah’s kings allowed idols to be set up in the temple. So more than once in the history of the Jews, the temple had to be cleansed. When Jesus came, the temple was a racket. The Jewish religious establishment had turned it in to a Walmart. You could buy, sale, exchange money, worship, pay your taxes all in the same place. You will remember that Jesus put a stop to this corrupt practice.

Paul tells us twice in the Letter to the Corinthians that our bodies are the TEMPLE OF GOD. Do you have any idols in the temple? Is there anything in your heart that you love more than Jesus? John gives us great advice, stay away from anything that would take the place of Jesus. It could be money or TV or a habit. I have three games on my phone that I play. My favorite is Sudoku which is a number puzzle. I use to do cross word puzzles and Sudoku’s in the old days when you had news papers but the Sudoku game is better on the phone than on paper. I got in the habit of getting up, fixing my coffee and sitting there at the table and doing my two puzzles. Some days it was 30 minutes and then others it was longer. So I made myself a rule, no phone puzzles or games until all my devotions are done. When I got to the boys basketball game yesterday, I remembered, I had not done my puzzles so I did them at time outs and half time. Can you go anywhere without your phone? Has your phone become an idol? What about sports? Do you put ball before church? What bothers you more, to miss a ball game or church?

Extra

Well folks, we made it to 2022…Happy New Year everyone. Let us start the new year right by praying for Gregg and all our friends in crisis. You never know what a day will produce, let alone a year. The last two years have been tough on middle America {the working class}. The left is taking our rights one by one; even our right to elect a president. Join me in praying for the demise of the Marxist movement in America and the total destruction of the house of abortion. Let us pray that true justice, God’s justice, will be done and not social justice which is man’s version.

NEWS BREAK for GPBC…It is settled, at least the planning. We will have one breakfast per month and two dinners in 2022. The lunch meals will be July 3 and December 18. The first breakfast is January 30. No breakfast on the months where we have lunch.