Ever feel like you’re firing on all cylinders for God, your prayer life is good, you’re learning a lot and growing so much from your time spent in God’s Word?
Yet something’s just not working ..
It should be, you reason. But you never quite experience the blessing of God that others do. What’s the problem?
Take a look at the following and see if you can tell. Let’s take this one first,
2 Kings 18:21-23 (New International Version)
21 Look now, you are depending on Egypt, that splintered reed of a staff, which pierces a man’s hand and wounds him if he leans on it! Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who depend on him. 22 And if you say to me, “We are depending on the LORD our God” – isn’t he the one whose high places and altars Hezekiah removed, saying to Judah and Jerusalem, “You must worship before this altar in Jerusalem”?
23 ” ‘Come now, make a bargain with my master, the king of Assyria: I will give you two thousand horses—if you can put riders on them!
Did you catch it?
No?
Try this one then,
Numbers 33:52 (New International Version)
52 drive out all the inhabitants of the land before you. Destroy all their carved images and their cast idols, and demolish all their high places.
That was still a bit cryptic. How bout this?
1 Kings 3:3 (New International Version)
3 Solomon showed his love for the LORD by walking according to the statutes of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.
There is a definite trend in the Old Testament between the success of leaders and their loathing of the pagan ‘high places’ where false gods were often worshipped. And there was also a direct correlation with evil kings and their love for the high places. For these kings, placating the false religions of the day seemed to be the royal ‘pet sin’ of the times.
And the results for those who let false worship intermingle with worship of the one true God was always BAD!
Not Michael Jackson bad, just plane old Bad with a capital ‘B.’
But high places don’t simply refer to worshipping idols in the foothills. A high place for you and me is anything we put before God – anything that becomes a ‘pet sin’ for us.
Are you and God not really ‘clicking’ right now? Maybe just ‘half a click?’
Start looking for the high places in your life – those pet sins that God used to convict you about that now seem trivial.
· a quick glance at a shady website late at night?
· talking about others in your ‘small group’ and calling it, ‘prayer requests?’
· forsaking corporate worship?
· Laughing at questionable jokes or TV shows at God’s expense?
· Withholding your tithe for just about any reason you can think of?
· Skipping your time with God for weeks at a time?
I have no idea what your particular high place is. I only know how to stay on alert for my own. And I know not to take these compromises lightly.
They’re a big deal to God.
Tear ’em down.
Right now.
Today.
And see how quickly things improve!