WORSHIPDevotion from Pastor Bob Coy (senior pastor at Calvary Chapel Ft. Lauderdale)activeword.orgAfter a night of binge drinking with his friends, William woke up in a place he didn’t recognize.
The Muncie, Indiana man was groggy and still a little inebriated, so it’s understandable that he was confused. His surroundings were dark and smelly. Random plastic bags and boxes seemed to be falling on him. And he was vaguely aware of a metallic screeching noise.
After a few seconds, the realization dawned in William’s alcohol-fogged mind that he was in the belly of a commercial trash-collection vehicle. The startled driver had just emptied a commercial dumpster into his truck and was about to activate its compactor when he heard William screaming.
William later told police that he had been drinking with buddies at a local bar until about 3 a.m., but he said he didn't recall how he ended up inside the trash bin.
The Slip-n-Slide to Garbage-villeI mention this little news item because in addition to being kind of funny, it illustrates pretty vividly a larger truth about life.
Like a biblical parable, poor William’s experience perfectly captures the way the enemy of our souls offers a deal that looks pretty attractive on Friday night but invariably ends with a rude awakening in one of life’s garbage trucks on Saturday morning.
I speak from experience on this.
If you know my testimony at all, you know that God redeemed me out of a pretty seedy lifestyle in Las Vegas and that abuse of chemical substances was common for me. I never woke up in a trash truck but I did find myself in some strange and scary places.
For example, back in the days I started using cocaine, my “friends” and I all assured one another that this was the one drug that wasn’t addictive.
That’s right, I was one of those geniuses who fell for the pretty lie that you could experience all the upsides of the high without experiencing any of the negative consequences.
Of course, we were wrong. At great personal cost, we eventually found out that cocaine was very, very addictive indeed.
But sin is rarely like grabbing hold of an electrified fence—where you experience instant negative consequences. Satan is much more subtle and subversive than that. (
“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made.” –Genesis 3:1, KJV)
The devil’s traps always start out fun. Then bit by bit the fun is replaced with dysfunction, decay and bondage.
For me it was. . . well, you have to wash cocaine down with something. So I used large volumes of alcohol to lubricate my downward slip-n-slide into the garbage truck.
Jonah ended up in the belly of a whale because he was running from God. Many of us, my old-self included, end up in one of life’s garbage trucks because we’re running with the devil.
Chasing an IllusionHere’s the thing about idols. They insist on being served. And once you’ve served it for while, you find that you can’t think clearly anymore.
Back before I surrendered my life to Christ and experienced an amazing transformation, I served a variety of idols. Among them were pleasure, prestige, money, drugs and alcohol.
Everything they promised seemed so wonderful, but was an illusion.
But the truth is, even believers can fall into the trap of idol worship. Even bona fide, born-again Christians can find themselves chasing some tantalizing mirage put forth by the devil. And even the most mature and seasoned of saints can wake up one day and find that in some compartments of their lives, they’ve been serving someone or something other than the One who saved them.
And the results are always the same.
You wake up with Taco Bell burrito wrappers stuck to your face, on the verge of being compacted and trucked off to the landfill. But here’s the good news.
“Oh, there’s some good news here, Bob?”
Oh, yes! In fact, it’s great news. When you catch yourself slipping into idol-worship mode, there is a powerful and instant cure.
It’s called worship.
When we stop obsessing about ourselves and our circumstances long enough to focus on the majesty, magnificence and mercy of our Father God, it snaps us back into the right orientation.
It puts us into position to hear more clearly, see more clearly, and choose more wisely. That’s the power of worship. But most importantly, it’s the appropriate response to the extraordinary privilege we have to directly access the throne of the mighty Creator-God of the universe.
Until the whole world hears,
Pastor Bob