IDOLATRY IS INFIDELITY!

 Hello and Praise God!

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In the beginning of this year, one of the things God impressed on my heart is that this year, the spiritual state of those who are called by Him will be tried by fire, I though noticed that so many of us, children of God will choose to not be tried by fire and live with no desire to be confronted by God in any way. Idolatry is one of the things God is beginning to confront in the hearts of His children and in this process, there is going to be a major distinction of who are of God and not and I pray that we will not be those who run away but be those who take in the confrontation of God, which He does with so much love and turn from our ways, and fully follow Him and please Him with every day that we live, because, we were saved to the praise and glory of His name. Amen!

When the Lord delivered the Israelites from the hand of Pharaoh, the first thing He wanted to do is enter into a covenant with them and give them the commands they were supposed to live by. The very first commandment as stipulated in Exodus 20 is you shall have no other gods apart from me. Often, He would say that He is a jealous God, jealous for His people and would not stand them having any other gods. He would tell them to TAKE HEED lest they make COVENANTS with gods of the lands they would be going to or make their own gods (Exodus 34:12-17), He would tell them TURN NOT TO idols (Leviticus 19:4). God knew that it would be easy for them to be lured into idolatry, He knew that there would be things that would seemingly look more attractive than Him in the eyes and also that there are times they would want to craft gods, make gods for themselves. It is usually said that there is no man that does not worship something or someone and the truth is you cannot say that you worship God and still worship other gods.

Idolatry has always been as a matter of a choice that a person makes that is not God, we have made it to be a matter of what people prioritize instead of God, yet it is more than priority, it is a matter of faithfulness. We are the bride of Christ, He bought us with His blood and when we got born again, we entered into a covenant with Him. Our relationship with God is likened to that of a husband and a wife and the moment we vowed our lives to Him, one of the things we vowed is to be faithful to Him ONLY. Idolatry is therefore not just what you prioritize, it is unfaithfulness to the covenant you made with God at the cross of Calvary. Idolatry is the adultery of the heart. Why? Because every idol usually is derived from somewhere, it originates from somewhere and it begins in the heart of a man. Idolatry is hewn from the heart of a man such that before it manifests as an action done, or a word spoken, it has been in existence for a good amount of time from within the man. It is lodged in the heart of a man as a longing that is anti-God, which is consistently being fed, so that it finds expressions in you.

Every single time therefore, we practice idolatry, we are adulterers and the idols are the 'secret' lovers that we allow, that have broken our covenant with the Lord. We have made covenants with idols and we are super casual about it, we think we can even just ignore them away! What makes it worse is like the Israelites when they requested Aaron to make them a golden calf, they did not do it to ignore God, or even reject Him but they thought that in making the calf they are honoring God. This lets you know, that even us, there are idols in our lives that we have enthroned in our lives in the name of we are doing it for God, or in enthroning them, God is honored. The Word says that many will call out Lord, Lord, we did this for you, we worked miracles in your name, we honored our men and women of God, but He says, I knew you not! Because infidelity at times will look like a favor you think you are doing for your spouse. You see, we think most of the times God wants to be first in our lives, no He does not, He wants to be only! 

We have come to a place as Christians where we are just okay with God, we are not willing to be in any discomfort, we push God aside only to pick Him up when there is trouble, we have no time for Him and we give Him the remaining time but we want Him to understand because we need those jobs, we needed to be in that function, we have allowed things and people in our lives to compete with our affection with and for God, we are not willing to yield our hearts to Him or even allow Him to try our hearts, it is those little things we say embedded in our hearts that we do not want to deal with are the side chicks interfering with our relationship with God. We have given ourselves and our time to what satisfies us temporarily and leaves us more empty. Because that is the way of the enemy, to deceive men to believe they are experiencing pleasure yet they are slowly sinking deep into his snare and before they know it, completely lost in their idolatry. 

Idolatry is infidelity! We have been unchaste both in action and thought. In doing so, we have mocked God to His face, we have told Him how He is not enough that is why we go out to look for other sources of satisfaction. We have downplayed idolatry so much such that we cannot see how many of us are ensnared by it. The Bible talks of how when a man looks lustfully at another woman, he has already committed adultery with it. You do not even need to necessarily worship that idol, you just need to desire it lustfully. Read Isaiah 57, Jeremiah 3: NLT, and verse 7 says You have committed adultery on every high mountain, there you have worshipped idols and have been unfaithful to Me. We have prostituted ourselves with other lovers and we want God to just be with us as if nothing ever happened. Read Ezekiel 16 too, God says how He picked Jerusalem up when she was at the verge of death, beautified her but then she took what God gave her as though it was her own and used that to prostitute with idols and God says this is adultery to Me! (Ezekiel 23:37). If you do not even take time to ask God to make you feel how He feels, even reading that one text, you can feel the hurt in the heart of God. We have moved the Lord to jealousy and have angered Him with our idols. We promised Him all the days of our lives but it was just mere talk, just like how we honor Him with our lips and not our hearts.

We want to be with Him on Sundays and even separate that day for Him yet we are atheists- yes, we live as though we do not know Him from Monday to Saturday. Our famous phrase is God will understand, we just slipped and we will seek for forgiveness, is it not better to stay holy, remain holy, keep in holiness than to be seeking forgiveness all the time? Oh we speak of how impossible it is and hard to be with and in the Lord all the time and please Him with every second we live, yet we boldly declare how we live in the days of grace yet this grace has become to us a license to sin and not power to be holy and remain holy as it should be! God is hurt! And when He looks at our hearts, most of us do not reflect His heart, leave alone who He is. We are now at the place of striving to look good together with God from the outside yet He is not with us. From the outside, you even soak in the accolades of men who tell you how your relationship with God is adorable, yet you have other lovers who await thee, your little secret. You relate with God out of convenience. How perverse have those who call themselves children of God become!

God is calling us to repent. He wants to take us back. We need to repent. We need to have moments when we, ask the Lord to expose our hearts to us to see what really is going on in there. It seems that we have forgotten where the Lord brought us out of such that we can afford to cheat on Him. Some of us are so scared to come to God because the guilt of their idolatry is heavy within us but then we are not willing to get rid of those idols, those other lovers. Some of us are adulterers in the secret and because our pastors have not identified it, we are safe, do we forget that God sees everything and we cannot hide from Him? Some of us, those men and women of God you are under have become your idols; you cannot even hear God for yourself, you have been made to believe that minus them you are not. Yes, some of you, it is your men and women of God that have made you who you are and not God! Some men and women of God are even now encouraging sin and more in the sense that they will not even call it. And the Lord says, You are without excuse you worshippers of idols!. Some of us think that we cannot go back to the worship of the idols in our lives because well, you have not been in touch with them for a few weeks or months. See, you cannot not have part with an idol by just setting it aside without destroying it and destroying the high places from whence you worshipped or served it from. Whatever it is that was a means to or an attachment to idol worship cannot be allowed to remain. 

There is a separation that is happening in the church and God will make a distinction of those who are His and those who are not. As hard as this can be, we have to sit through the moments that the Lord is chastising us, showing us what we have been ignoring. Some of us are feeling so weary and we do not understand what the problem is, but it is our idolatry. It is weary to worship an idol and before we know it , the destruction that will come upon our lives will be so great! Whatever you are trusting other than God to be god has to be let go! You got to get rid of it completely. Repent, let there be be great repentance, a complete turning to the Lord, a renewal of the vows you made to God.

James 4:4- 10AMP

You are like unfaithful wives- having illicit love affairs with the world and breaking your marriage vow to God! Do you not know that being the worlds friend is being Gods enemy? So whoever chooses to be a friend of the world takes his stand as an enemy of God. 

verse 4-5 in the message translation says:  You are cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and His way. And do you suppose God does not care? The proverb has it that He is a fiercely jealous lover!

Read through the whole text. The instructions are this:

Be subject to God. Submit to God. Yield to Him. Surrender to God. It is in willingly giving ourselves to Him that we can resist the devil and cause him to flee.

Come close to God with a contrite heart and He will come close to you. Wash your hands ye sinners and purify your unfaithful hearts, you double minded people.

Be miserable and grieve over your sin. Let your foolish laughter be turned into mourning and your reckless joy to gloom.

Humble yourself in the presence of the Lord with an attitude of  repentance and insignificance and He will lift you up.

Believers, let us lay down this idols, get rid of the altars where we had elevated them and all that has taken our hearts. We have cheated on God, we have been unfaithful yet He still beckons us, come home! I am ready to receive you back, if only you would genuinely repent and completely turn away from the wickedness engraved from within you. Pluck this plant of idolatry by its roots. Do not ignore what you call little cause your idol may be ministry, it may be your spouse or friend, food, your body shape etc. You will say some things are petty, I will say that as long as it displeases and breaks the heart of My Father, I will have nothing to do with it! I also feel like some children of God are not able to reach the levels God had predestined them to be at, not because they cannot but because God is not willing to loose them for anything. He would rather not give you what He has for you than give it to you and loose you. Strive to know the Lord more each day- in knowing Him, you do not just get to see the person you ought to be but become that person, strive to know what pleases His heart, develop intimacies with Him in prayer and with all you are, respond to the groanings of His pleasures.

As the Lord is jealous for you, guard your relationship with Him zealously and with jealousy!

He is coming back soon! His bride must be ready for Him!

In His Service,

Imani Mundia.