Cast down your idols....

This song…I just can’t get away from it. It haunts my thoughts and pierces my conscience. Here’s the line that was after me today: Oh Lord we cast down our idols… It got me thinking about idols. I think sometimes we think of idols as just things we are worshipping: career, romance, money, etc… But I think idols are more than that. Idols are anything we can’t cast down in the name of Jesus. Things like: worry, fear, anger, gluttony. Lately my biggest idol is righteous indignation. I have at least three situations in my life right now where I have been wronged. I have been sinned against… quite obviously sinned against. In these situations, anger is a logical response. Feeling pain over being hurt is logical as well. But hanging on to my indignation, struggling to let go of the hurt and pain because I feel righteously angry that these things happened, well that is not right. Then I’ve made that thing an idol. I’ve elevated it to a status where it is exempt from being cast down before God, and that my friend should signal some serious warning bells!

Guess what? Today on my way home from the dentist, it did! All of a sudden my heart felt as if it had been punched. I started crying: Oh Lord we cast down our idols…. Over and over again…. Oh Lord we cast down our idols…. Oh Lord we cast down our idols…. I replayed that part of the track so many times my children were begging for mercy. The hard part is that knowing we have an idol and wanting to cast it down before God is only the beginning. Satan doesn’t want us to cast down our idols. Satan doesn’t want us to bow our hearts… bend our knees… Satan does NOT want us to be humble. He wants us to pridefully cling to those things we are idolizing. So he is going to throw a lot of fiery darts our way. He will remind us of that idol. He will taunt us with that idol. He will torment us with that idol. It will be gut wrenching and grueling to get that thing out of us.

Think of a wisdom tooth whose roots are crooked and twisted and even wrapped TIGHTLY around each other and fused with the bone. A dentist will need all his strength and all his dental knowledge to get that thing extracted. That’s what we have to do with our idols. We have to muster all our strength to root out that worry. We have to gather all our spiritual knowledge to extricate that fear. We have to work hard to extinguish that righteous indignation. I believe that God will help us in this endeavor; however, I also believe when we give power to something evil, when we allow an idol to have center stage in our hearts, then we are going to have to combine some good old fashioned elbow grease with God’s grace in order to cast that bad boy DOWN!

So whatever your idol is today, why don't you try to cast it down? I know I'm going to. It won’t be easy. We'll need to be strong. We will need God’s grace and all our strength and every bit of spiritual wisdom we have ever gained, but close your eyes with me and sing these words with ALL your heart:

We bow our hearts

We bend our knees

Oh Spirit come make us humble

We turn our eyes

From evil things

Oh Lord we cast down our idols

Clean Hands/Pure Hearts

Give us clean hands
Give us pure hearts....

I COMPLETELY and TOTALLY forgot about AWANA yesterday. I mean I knew it was Wednesday. I knew AWANA was on Wednesdays. But we started school yesterday and I worked and I took care of John. My s-i-l had brought dinner for us so I warmed that and then set to work straightening the house and doing the dishes when my phone signaled a notification at 6:15 p.m. "AWANA - Faith Bible Alliance" it read. WHAT!?!?!?! That was in 15 minutes!!!

AHHHH! I started shouting out commands and racing around the house. No one was dressed. Elijah was SOUND asleep. I started throwing children into clothing and grabbing Bibles and AWANA uniforms. I quickly threw together a dinner plate for Elijah and dressed him in his sleep. I loaded everyone in the minivan and arrived at the church at 6:40 p.m.! I was pretty darn proud of myself. I was notified of AWANA at 6:15 p.m. and I gathered everyone and everything and got to the church (a 15 minute trip) in just 25 minutes TOTAL!

After depositing my precious cargo at the church and racing back home to make sure my patient was okay, I turned right back around to return to the church. This second trip was made at a much more leisurely pace, and as I drove I poured out my heart in worship to my King. I haven't had much time lately to even pee by myself much less to worship tearfully at the feet of my Savior. For about 2 1/2 months, I have been RACING around from task to task, shooting up quick prayers of desperation in between: packing and unpacking boxes, working way too many hours, shuttling my husband from appointment to appointment. Moments of quiet solitude, heart-rending worship, meaningful quiet time, these have all become a thing of the past for me.

So as I drove south on Hwy 67, I sang along to this song in complete isolation.... tears streaming down my face, heart ripping in two: give us clean hands.... give us pure hearts... let us not lift our souls to another... I've sung the words a thousand times. I know them deep in my bones, yet they hit me in a new way last night. I realized that I usually have clean hands. I'm not trying to be boastful, but I am someone who has been a Christian for well over 25 years now. I know the drill. I have the routine down. I typically do a fairly decent job of keeping my hands clean. I know how to keep my temper in check. I am fairly decent at holding my tongue and biting back inappropriate words or angry retorts. I can usually keep my hands pretty clean. However, a pure heart.... that is a TOTALLY different thing. I realized that while my hands typically stay pretty clean, my heart is ANYTHING but pure. When I am wronged, I am decent at giving a godly response, but inside I am seething with anger. When I am angry, I can usually hold back my vicious words, but in my head, I let them fly with wild abandon.

This summer the heat has been turned up SIGNIFICANTLY under Jami Lynn Kastner.... a move, overtime hours, finishing up homeschooling, the purchase of a lemon vehicle, bills unpaid, needs unfulfilled, sleep missed, friendships lost, trust betrayed... these are just a few of the things that had me at the breaking point by mid-August. Then just when I thought it couldn't get any worse, just when I thought I was at the end of myself toss in a brain surgery which would put my husband out of work without pay for a month or more.

Guess what happened??? That impure heart.... those icky thoughts I had been storing up in my brain.... when the heat was turned up, most of them came POURING out. I started cussing like a sailor. I have really never been a cusser before. Having been schooled in Christian Education (where cussing is punishable by suspension) for 12 years and then teaching in Christian Education (where I felt compelled to be CONSTANTLY on guard to be a good witness) for 6 years, I really never even thought cuss words very much, and I NEVER gave free reign to my tongue in that area. Yet this summer, as the pressure mounted, as the pain increased, as the tension rose, the impurity of my heart flowed freely out of my mouth. My anger consumed me. Depression enveloped me. Sin was the result of the ickiness I had been hiding behind my clean hands and inside my impure heart.

As I drove down the street last night it hit me hard: clean hands are NOWHERE NEAR good enough... that's only part of the equation. A PURE HEART! That is the second half. Having clean hands without a pure heart is like peanut butter without the jelly. It's like Hall without Oats. It is piety without purity.

As I cried out to God last night, I sang those words like NEVER before: give us clean hands.... GIVE US PURE HEARTS!!!! That's my prayer today... that my heart will be pure too. Whether I am skipping down a flower lined path of prosperity and beauty or clawing my way up a rocky ledge out of a deep and dark valley, I want my heart to be pure. I want to take this thing called Jami's Walk with God to a new level. A level where the outside calm and cleanliness is a good representation of what is going on in the inside. A place where I have clean hands AND a pure heart.