He has shown me in the last few weeks the types of idolatry I had in my heart, which can be so hard to discern, because it can be so neatly interwoven with your day to day ministry. A lot of my desires and intentions started off pure and somehow got corrupted along the way. Obviously, at the time, they were not as plain to see as they are now. I didn’t necessarily think these things, but ultimately my actions revealed to me otherwise.

Markers

Here are some of the ones I struggled with:-

Keep God’s call to love Him higher than any other call

I treated made my calling and ministry an idol: I loved my calling more than I loved the one who called me to it and made my ministry and calling more important than God.

Well of course, when you put all your hope and joy in anything other than God it doesn’t end well. God will either give you it and allow you to discover how disapointing it is, or He’ll not let you have it so you can’t worship it.

God is gracious, you don’t earn your spouse

I believed that my failure or delay to get married was due to my own failure to do or personal sin. I remember points in my walk where I was desperately asking mentors and peers to call me out on sin they saw in my life. For some reason, I thought I was single because I wasn’t worthy yet, because I still have major areas of sin in my life. I hoped that confronting and eradicating those areas myself would hasten the hope of alleviating the burden of being single. In the end I started struggling trying to take control of my sin, whatever I was doing wasn’t working so I would work harder and harder try and make myself worthy of someone – until burn out.

However, I neglected the knowledge that God is lavishly gracious. God didn’t save me because He saw potential in me. God already chose me before the foundation of the world. God chose me in spite of the foresight of knowing how much of a fool I can be. God didn’t save me because He thought I’d make a good model Christian. He saved me because He is gracious, and it has nothing to do with what I do or fail to do that will bring to completion what He has started in me. He didn’t save me because He thought I would make a good deacon, ministry leader or wife.

If God were to give me a ministry or a husband or kids, it’s not because I’ve earned it or because you’re finally worthy of someone. Same for the opposite, just because you’ve had a dirty and horrific past, doesn’t mean you don’t “deserve” a husband. In fact, if marriage was based being worthy and deserving of it – no-one but Jesus would be allowed to get married.

Besides, it’s God that sanctifies you, not about self improvement for God. Left to ourselves we rely on behavioral modification, God works on the heart.

Don’t get me wrong, this also doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing, but in response to God’s work, out of love for what He has done we ought to love him with all our body, mind, strength and soul.

Be driven by love for God, not a love for marriage

Somehow my genuine desire for God’s glory to shine through me distorted and corrupted along the way, and I wanted to take home all that glory for myself. Somehow, my genuine desire for people to see how amazing God was to work in me turned in to a desire for people to see how amazing I am. I wanted people to think well of me, how well I lead, how well I serve, how hard I worked, how holy I am.

Of course, life isn’t about you, and the moment you think so, you ultimately in your heart will view people differently; the same happened to me. As soon as people fail to give me glory and bask in my amazingness, the inner turmoil erupts and I become a basket case for attention and pity parties.

And of course when people I worked alongside failed, I frustration turned to how others were a hindrance to my success. When people failed to give me acknowledgement, the fame I deserved, and the pat on the back, I was sour. I was bitter thinking how hard I worked and how lazy other people were. I became self-righteous. It can be really hard to see it coming, because you start with pure and godly intentions, but Satan is sneaky, and if you give him a foothold to your heart he will invade it.