God as my Anchor

I have been reading Plan B by Pete Wilson, and it has definitely been a life-changing book for me.  The book is about what happens when “Plan A” fails and you are having to come up with a new goal, new idea, new dream.  For me, most of the book was rehashing a lot of details that I already knew but was being shown to me in a different light.  Then I hit chapter ten.

Chapter ten discusses the topic of what we make our “anchors” in life.  You know, what it is that we seek comfort and stability in when the seas are turbulent.  Wilson shared Ezekiel 16:39-42, and it totally rocked my world:

“and I will give you into the hands of your lovers, and they will tear down your shrines, demolish you high places, strip you of your clothing, take away your jewels, and will leave you naked and bare.  They will incite a crowd against you and they will stone you and cut you to pieces with their swords.  They will burn your houses with fire and execute judgments on you in the sight of many women.  They I will stop you from playing the harlot, and you will also no longer pay your lovers.  So I will calm my fury against you and my jealousy will depart from you, and I will be pacified and angry no more.”

Give you into the hands of your lovers:  When we force our way into somewhere God does not want us, we will find that those idols are usually self-serving and do not care about us.  We will be benevolent to them and do our best to keep them, but they are less considerate.

Tear down your shrines, demolish your high places:  God will ultimately remove that which is our idol (usually it does not feel so good), but often times he will let it stay in our lives if we continue to entertain it.

Strip you of your clothing, take away your jewels:  As I mentioned earlier, idols are self-serving and they usually don’t give a rip about what we think or want.  Idols do what idols want, they are the possessions that possess.  This is why I do my best to steer clear of them.

When we think of idols, we think of something that we carve or chisel that we sacrifice things to.  The truth is, most idols are either very normal or not seen at all: money, fame, jobs, family, marriage, most start as noble goals but then they try to unseat God.

I am writing this today as a man who open accepts the fact that he was the harlot to things that were not stable, were not holy, and ultimately not God.  I thought that when I was pursuing God and pursuing stability, I was really just trying to get stability and it never came.  I got scared and it clouded my judgment, then I watched the progression in Ezekiel unfold.

I also wanted to share this with everyone today because I would put money on it that so many people out there see this in their lives.  They realize that they are not experiencing the life that they want, and that there are certain things that are interfering with that.  I have struggled with this intentionally and unintentionally, and I know that others do. 

With this in mind, I hope that this helps you understand the way in which idols operate in our lives and impact our lives.  This is serious business, because even though we might love them, they only love themselves and will take everything from us.  So what is our anchor?  God.

I am sure that someone is reading this thinking about how God can be wild, unpredictable, and hard to understand.  But in the words of the beaver in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, “of course he is not safe, but he is good!”  When we trust in the fact that he is good and has our best interest in mind, then we will be willing to seek him and his will knowing that when we try to take our own paths, it usually does not end well.

This is something that I am learning, and I know many others are learning as well.  It takes time and patience, but I have found that in the end, I want God in his rightful place rather than having something else providing false hope.