Jealous for my affection

Take care, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you go, lest it become a snare in your midst. You shall tear down their altars and break their pillars and cut down their Asherim (for you shall worship no other god, for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God),
(Exo 34:12-14)

This morning I pondered a message from John Piper. The message was about our affection for Christ- specifically, how does my affection for Christ compare to my affection for the "other" things I love in my life? How does it compare with my love of comfort? My love for "down time"? My love for Amy and Matthew?

I love to spend time with Amy and Matthew, they are gifts from God. I enjoy leisure time, kicking back and taking in a football or basketball game. And I believe that those things too are gifts from God given for my enjoyment. But when enjoyment of those things becomes an end in itself and not a means to enjoying God, I become an idolater.

This morning my prayer is that my affections, my deepest love, would be reserved for God alone. That I could enjoy all other things only as a means of enjoying Him, never letting my delight in temporal pleasures compete with my utmost delight in the one for Whom I was made.

God is jealous for my affection. He does not want me to take things which He has made good and mold them into idols. All things in my life should point toward the God Who made me for Himself.

We bow our hearts
we bend our knees
O, Spirit, come make us humble
we turn our eyes
from evil things
O, Lord, we cast down our idols

Give us clean hands
give us pure hearts
let us not lift our souls to another

O, God, let us be
a generation that seeks
who seeks your face, O God of Jacob
"Clean Hands", by Charlie Hall