7 You shall have no other gods before Me or besides Me.
8 You shall not make for yourself [to worship] a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in the heavens above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.
9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me “
Dear people of God, it is so amazing how a number of professing Christians engage in idolatry without realizing it and when counseled, they make bold to defend their actions.
I was made to understand recently that a popular pastor and his wife running a ministry in the United States of America are engaged in a practice known as “grave sucking.”
Their action is based on the premise that there are some anointed ministers of God who died and may not have transferred their anointing to other ministers still alive so the dead pastor’s anointing is trapped in the grave and so grave sucking is required to retrieve the anointing.
The practice of grave sucking involves lying down on the gravestone of the buried corpse of the dead anointed minister with the aim of retrieving the “trapped anointing” from there into the body of the person lying over the grave.
I saw two photos of the pastor’s wife lying across the graves of dead ministers of God.
How on earth can God’s power be trapped in a grave?
This practice is similar to another group of Christians who make images of saints in heaven contrary to God’s command (please look carefully at today’s lead Holy Bible text) and pray to these images and worship these images by touching and speaking to the images.
They claim that these saints are in heaven where they can intercede for them in prayer here on earth. Is this not clearly idolatry?
The same group also count beads to pray and ask the mother of Jesus who was human here on earth and is now in heaven to pray for them for solution to their problems.
Nowhere in the Holy Bible does not command Christians to pray to Him through human beings for Jesus Christ ALONE is the one Mediator between God and humans as we are told in 1 Timothy 2:5 because He is the Saviour and Redeemer of mankind.
There is another group of Christians whose focus is not on God but candles, anointing oil, holy water, incense, etc. They are so desperate over these articles that they have pastors who have made it a business of selling these items to them.
No doubt God’s Word gives information on anointing oil (Exodus 30:25; James 5:14) and holy water (Numbers 5:17) and they have their place in Christendom but they should not be the focus of the Believer but the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
I will not fail to mention another category of Christians who subtly practice idolatry. Fashion has so distracted this group that they can spend hours on end preparing for even a Church meeting with the sole objective of impressing the congregation with their clothes and appearance rather than desiring to get spiritual food, God’s Word, for their spirits.
They are interested in the latest fashion trend; whether it is godly or ungodly is immaterial to them. They are ready to go to any length to get resources just to satisfy their craving for the latest fashion trend.
Fashion has become their god and this is most dangerous.
There is yet another group whose mobile phone is their god. They spend the bulk of their time online on social media searching not just for things that edify but things that defile the person.
The danger here is that the things that defile (immoral movies, photos, music, etc) have evil spirits behind them that enter and possess the person viewing or listening to the immoral material.
Once the foul spirit enters, it controls the defiled person’s lifestyle and the defiled person is unwilling to listen to sound godly counsel and becomes rebellious.
The final group I want to discuss here is those whose family and friends have become their god – they love father, mother, siblings, children, relative, friends and acquaintances more than God.
They are unwilling to point out the error in these people’s lives using God’s Word as a reference.
The reason they refuse to do this is because according to them, the Bible says we should not judge or criticise or condemn others so that we too would not be judged or criticised or condemned quoting Jesus’ Words in Matthew 7:1.
Now, what does Jesus say in verse 5 of Matthew 7? “You hypocrite, first get the beam of timber out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the tiny particle out of your brother's eye.”
Jesus says to first deal with the errors of your life using His Word as standard and then you would be able to deal with the errors in others’ lives.
God never told us not to judge as many ignorant and incorrigible Christians claim today. What you should understand is that anytime you are preaching God’s Word, you are passing judgement on those who do wrong and God expects us to preach His Word (Mark 16:15-16; 2 Timothy 3:16) so that lost and backslidden souls would hear the only Truth that can set them free from the devil’s bondage once they believe and accept.
You must however, ensure as Paul says, not to preach the Word and then you yourself become an outcast from God’s kingdom at the end of your life here on earth – 1 Corinthians 9:27.
This is a prayer from a sincere heart of someone who wanted to enter heaven at the end of his stay here on earth and he said in that same verse of Scripture what he did to ensure this, which was keeping his body or flesh subject to his spirit that is renewed daily by God’s Word.
Dear friend, some Christians do not understand that we came into this world alone and we are leaving alone.
If you were born into a family or society where a certain behaviour or culture is practised, the sensible thing to do is to study that behaviour or culture against God’s Word and if it contradicts or contravenes God’s commands, then take a firm stand against it regardless of what anyone including family members say because at the end of the day, it is what God’s says that would stand.
Do not engage in idolatry because you want to please the world.
Seek FIRST God’s kingdom and His righteousness, and everything else you need God would give you – Matthew 6:33.
A Word is enough for the wise.
May the good Lord bless you as you heed His Word today, act on it and share with others in Jesus’ Most Righteous Name, Amen.
Gabriel Ama.
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