Matthew 6:24 - No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.

Little kids can have a choice between two prizes - a new car or 200 candy bars. They’ll pick the candy bars every time. A car means nothing to them.

We also have a choice between two things - stuff in the world or God himself. We so often pick the world. God means too little to us.

Romans 1:23 - and [they] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

Many turn up their noses at Hindus who worship thousands of gods and other animist cultures who worship nature.

But we all trade God for non-God. Many of us affluent people worship our idols of Apple, Ferrari, Taylor Swift, Favorite Sports Team, Food, Luxury, Work, and many others. We’re all polytheistic in some sense.

These things can absolutely be enjoyed. There’s nothing wrong with any of them alone. It’s how we handle these things and so often we don’t rightly order them.

One

How can we know the way something is ordered? One way is to look at how much time we invest in it. Quantify it. Compare it to the time given to God. What about the quality of the time? Does he get our good energy or the scraps (if anything at all)? Another way is to consider our word count. Estimate it. How many words (internal and external) does God get each day? How about our money? God doesn’t demand our every last penny. He well knows we need money for living. But does he receive anything from the storehouses of wealth he’s given to us? Do we give anything back? None of this is perfect but an approximation designed to give awareness. In some way or another, we truly have divided hearts.

This is why it is written:

Deuteronomy 6:4,15 - Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one… You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you — for the Lord your God in your midst is a jealous God…

He is one single God. Not more.

And this is why, in the very next verse we read:

Deuteronom 6:5 - You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

He doesn’t want a piece of us. He wants the whole thing. He made us. He’s the greatest there is. He commands this for our good! He wants us to be happy - happy in him.

Many and Blind?

Most of us roll with dozens of lovers. That’s just reality. And we shouldn’t deny it. We can’t fool him. Sometimes we just can’t see it. And we’re around too many others who can’t either. It happens like this even if you’re a Christian. We get silent permission from each other that it’s ok because everyone else does it. And it messes us up:

Matthew 15:14-15 - “if the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.”

Many of our lives are a mess in various ways and we can’t figure out why. Maybe we worship too many things and we’re paying the price for it. And maybe we just can’t see it - we don’t know what we don’t know.

May we be like Bartimaeus:

Mark 10:46-52 - And they came to Jericho. And as [Jesus] was leaving Jericho with his disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent. But he cried out all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” And Jesus stopped and said, “Call him.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart. Get up; he is calling you.” And throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. And Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And the blind man said to him, “Rabbi, let me recover my sight.” And Jesus said to him, “Go your way; your faith has made you well.” And immediately he recovered his sight and followed him on the way.

It’s so simple. And it’s so fast. Which makes it so hard for so many of us: We call to him in faith. He calls back. He heals blindness because of faith. We follow him.

Levels

Sometimes we meet great people in life. We’ve heard about them for some time and finally get to know them personally. What a thing when we find out they’re even better than we imagined - that there’s so much people don’t know about the person that makes them excellent.

When we follow Jesus, he instructs us about all the things we don’t know about him and learn all the ways of how and why he’s so great - which produces deep respect (which is what the word “fear” below really means - absolute reverence and awe for seeing something so overwhelmingly incredible it scares us how good it is):

Psalm 86:11
Teach me your way, O Lord,
    that I may walk in your truth;
    unite my heart to fear your name.

When our bodies get body parts that become detached, it miserably painful. And the surgery to put those pieces back together is even more pain. But it’s a special pain. It’s a healing pain - the surgeon re-joining things.

God is a surgeon and the re-uniting of our hearts into a single unit sometimes brings great pain to us as the Holy Spirit does his work. But the result is God’s original design: One heart for one God.

May God take our divided hearts and unite it to be wholly for him!

God’s Call

Jacob had been blinded to his own sin for a long time. This partially led to the slaughter of an entire village. Then God had seen enough and called him to come and follow:

Genesis 35:2b - God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel and dwell there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you… [so we may go see] the God who answers me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.”

May we put away the idols. May we ask Jesus to heal us. May we catch the vision of who God really is. The one who answers. The one of presence. May Jesus himself give us eyes to see!

Deuteronomy 33:26-27
There is none like God, O Jeshurun,
    who rides through the heavens to your help,
    through the skies in his majesty.
The eternal God is your dwelling place,
    and underneath are the everlasting arms.