Bible Snack #105

​Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen (1 John 5:21).
 
Here’s John’s last instruction. If we don’t follow this one, we will be in deep trouble. We are to guard ourselves against idols. Anything can be an idol. Just look at people on drugs who have made drugs an idol in their lives. They have to have it!  Anything can be like that. Anything can drag us away from Jesus Christ; that’s why it is so important to spend quality time with Him.
 
I’m not a quality time person, I’m a words person. You want to butter me up? Use words. But Jesus? He’s a quality time person. He doesn’t want every encounter to be a strategy meeting. He simply wants to be with you and to have your full attention. He wants to impart things to you, and He can’t do that while you are agitatedly in the room with Him, but your mind is elsewhere. Things you think you must attend to are probably your idols. Things that come to your mind while you are Practicing His Presence, and you put away your spiritual prayer cloth and run to the phone, or to the computer, or whatever, these are idols, something you deem to be more important than Jesus. Make Him your idol! Make Him your Perfect Everything. Go to Him first and find out what is happening in heaven before mopping up the mess you find yourself in. In fact, you’ll probably find out there is no mess.
 
The path of Jesus lies right in the middle of what you called a problem. Guard yourself from making your mess, making your problem, bigger than Jesus. Lean on Him. Don’t bother with your own understanding. He’ll make your path straight. Yes, He will!