Love God with All Your Heart
Habit 6 of the Discipleship Culture Guidebook affects the way we see people! It gets us in touch with the core idols that drive our sin and reminds us of what is most important - to Love God with All Our Heart (Catch our peek into Habit 5 here!)
We are designed to give our first love, our worship, to the only one worthy of it: our Creator, our King, our Lord. But because of the great human problem of sin, we’ve instead chosen to give our first love and worship to false gods—to idols. An idol is anything (even a good thing) that’s more important to you than God (sin is parasitic—sin attaches to something good that God has created and distorts it). We are designed to love, and yet we spend so much time talking about what we think, instead.
Thinking well is incredibly important, but the biblical worldview gives us a richer and deeper portrait of humanity—at our core we are lovers created in the image of a loving God, and what drives and shapes our lives is our loves. When we look at one another, we should see lovers more than we see thinkers. As we learn about oursleves and our behavior, it’s important we take note of what our hearts are loving.
In our church family we talk about 4 root idols that we tend to attach our lives to. These are idols that we likely learned as children, and they are at our core, driving our sinful habits. This isn’t our identity by any means; we are beloved lovers of God, called His children. But, it’s important to take stock of where our hearts are. Try to identify which idol you are most prone to worship, make connections to your story (Habit 3), and repent. Make repenting of idolatry and sin an ongoing habit of your discipleship journey.
1. CONTROL You know you have a control idol if your greatest nightmare is uncertainty.
2. APPROVAL You know you have an approval idol if your greatest nightmare is rejection.
3. COMFORT You know you have a comfort idol if your greatest nightmare is stress/demands.
4. POWER You know you have a power idol if your greatest nightmare is humiliation.
“To encounter God is to change.”
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
We’re convinced that the reason there is so much shallow Christianity in our culture is because many people never displace the idolatry in their lives with Jesus, but instead simply bring in Jesus as an “add-on” to their life, keeping their idolatry firmly in the center.
You are a beautiful creation, designed to be loved and in love with a perfect Creator. He is sufficient; He is your perfect Father, Savior, friend. God loves you! He doesn’t love you because he “has to,” out of duty and obligation. God loves to love you, he delights in you, you’re his child and he enjoys you.
Take a look at this sermon by Fred Mok from last year on Habit 6!
Here is the full Habit 6 in the Guidebook to flip through, too:
We also want you to have access to the whole Guidebook if you don’t already, so below is a link to download it. We have a physical Guidebook for you too, so you can scribble down your thoughts and prayers and dive into the resource in a Lifegroup! Just email Alayne and we will get you a copy!