WEIGH DOWN: THE GOLDEN CALF

As you go through the journey in the desert, you may see several things about your heart that had not occurred to you before. Just what you are giving your heart to is something only God knows. This hot desert acts as an X-ray machine, revealing the inner workings of the heart.

So we find we have been bowing down to the refrigerator. The New Testament talks about greed as idolatry. "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry" (Colossians 3:5). Why is greed idolatry? Greed is idolatry in that we are trying to get things for ourselves. We do not believe in our hearts that there is a loving God who will meet all of our needs, and we certainly do not believe that He satisfies our wants. What if God does not have good taste in foods or material possessions? Who would want to include God on a shopping spree? He may not let us have upscale, brand-name shoes.

And what do we know of God's timing? Perhaps His watch is broken or He is helping people on the other side of the world. We do not want to bother Him with details. We may think, "To get in good with God, it will be best not to bother Him until we need the big stuff, right?" Wrong!

That thinking led the Israelites to create their own false god. Remember the story we told earlier about the golden calf? The Israelites wanted to get out of the desert fast. Moses had ascended a mountain to receive God's laws on stone tablets.

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, "Come, make us gods who will go before us…

So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf… (Exodus 32:la,3-4a)

When considerable time had passed and the Israelites did not see Moses coming back—so as not to bother God and in case His watch was broken—they made a golden calf to help speed things up. Of course, Israel's worship of the golden calf made God angry. Moses, himself angry, threw down the tablets God had made, breaking them. The Israelites had to wait another forty days for Moses as he replaced them.

We are no different from the Israelites. We, too, are willing to give up our jewelry to keep paying for our false gods—false helpers. We carve out an exercise/diet pill regimen to speed up our journey because we do not want to eat less food. We say, "Don't tell Gwen, but let's mix Weigh Down''" with diet pills to get us out of this desert faster." You will only stay in the desert longer because your heart does not want to eat less food.

Many will attempt mixing diuretics with Weigh Down Workshop'''. This may give them a false sense of security, but they should realize that diuretics could damage their kidneys.

We hope false gods will save us, but they will get us nowhere. Can false gods take away our desire to overeat? They cannot. Truth bears out that our false gods sabotage us rather than save us! Trying to worship God and food at the same time will not work.

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