These are the decrees and regulations you must be careful to obey when you live in the land that the LORD, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. You must obey them as long as you live. 2 “When you drive out the nations that live there, you must destroy all the places where they worship their gods–high on the mountains, up on the hills, and under every green tree. 3 Break down their altars and smash their sacred pillars. Burn their Asherah poles and cut down their carved idols. Completely erase the names of their gods! 4 “Do not worship the LORD your God in the way these pagan peoples worship their gods – Deuteronomy 12:1-4
As we begin a new year God has been challenging me that it’s important to ‘tear down the high places’. As the Israelites moved into the promised lands they were warned not to leave any idols or false gods in place. They were to worship God and him alone, and in order to do that they needed to destroy the idolatry of the nations before them.
I believe this is still relevant for our day and age – the culture around us worships all sorts of things – money, power, sex, status, fame as well as traditions, ideas, agendas and false understandings of God almighty. We build idols in the high places of our hearts, even placing ourselves on the throne instead of Jesus.
Lets ask God to show us any idols we have in our hearts, any false notions we have of him, any walls we’ve been hiding behind or boxes we’ve been trying to keep Him in. When He reveals these things to us may we say yes to all the fullness that Jesus has for us instead of saying ‘no’ to Him. May we be spiritually minded people who follow Him more closely this year