Years ago I was thinking about my fixation on a past relationship, and the Lord spoke to me about Lot’s wife. I wondered, What exactly did Lot’s wife do that turned her into a pillar of salt, and what does this have to do with me?
I did a Google search and read a couple of commentaries on the verses in Genesis. According to these, her sin was not merely looking back--but disobedience and disbelief. The angel of the Lord specifically instructed Lot and his family not to look back. Then I began to ask myself, in what ways is my tendency to “look back” and remain in the past linked to disobedience and disbelief? If God was telling me not to look back, then looking back would indeed be disobedient; but how was I not believing God for my future?
Well, to start with, since my last relationship was with someone who was everything I ever wanted in man—except that God was not the most important thing in his life--the thing I feared the most was that I would end up with someone that loves God, but that would fall short in some way that he did not. Oh, me of little faith!
One day, I was thinking about how much I would love to marry someone who likes to dance. The thought occurred to me, What if the godly man God gives me doesn’t like to dance?!? What a sad loss! Suddenly, it was if the Lord spoke to me again through the words of Jim Elliot: "He is no fool who gives the thing he cannot keep to buy what he cannot lose."
Most recently the Lord has been speaking to me through Tim Keller's book, Counterfeit Gods, and I have been incredibly convicted by the words in the first few chapters. He says, "The human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them at the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them" (xiv). As a matter of fact, Keller asserts, "the greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes" (xvii).
For those who heart’s desire is marriage--what could more easily become an idol than that?
God should be our true Spouse, but when we desire and delight in other things more than God we commit spiritual adultery. Romance or success can become 'false lovers' that promise to make us feel loved and valued. Idols capture our imagination, and we can locate them by looking at our daydreams. What do we enjoy imagining? What are our fondest dreams? We look to idols to love us, to provide us with value and a sense of beauty, significance, and worth (xxi).
What exactly was it that I was daydreaming about for months on end? Well, the specifics aren't important, but the key was that I was making marriage into an idol.
Keller uses the story of Abraham to illustrate:
God's extremely rough treatment of Abraham was actually merciful. Isaac was a wonderful gift to Abraham, but he was not safe to have and hold until Abraham was willing to put God first. As long as Abraham never had to choose between his son and obedience to God, he could not see that his love was becoming idolatrous….
Abraham took that journey, and only after that could Abraham love Isaac well and wisely…. Here, then, is the practical answer to our own idolatries, to the 'Isaacs' in our lives, which are not spiritually safe to have and hold.
We need to offer them up (13-14, 15, 17).
The day I broke it off with my boyfriend, my brother said to me, "Well, I guess you just gave God your Isaac." The only problem was, until I began reading Tim Keller's book, my willingness to "offer up my Isaac" operated as a bargaining tool: God, I gave up everything I ever wanted in a man for you; so now you owe me!
Only through Tim Keller's convicting words has the Lord allowed me to see both my idolatry and my lack of faith. According to Keller, we need to be able to say to the Lord: "I see that you may be calling me to live my life without something I never thought I could live without. But if I have you, I have the only wealth, health, love, honor and security I really need and cannot lose" (19).
Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.
