What is utterly addicting for you? For me, it’s trading on the stock market. In the middle of a life overflowing with toilets that need fixing, yards that need maintaining, and checkbooks that need balancing, life feels a lot like a losing battle. To win at something is intoxicating.
First thing in the morning, my hands warming on a cup of coffee, I sit down at my computer for my time with God. And the craving starts; what if the market is moving right now. I could be making money. Satisfaction is just a click away. But I’ve already committed this block of time for God. Do my opportunities get the throne or does he?
I wish I could say that God always got the throne, but the market often won. In fact, there was a time where virtually everything won – getting ready for work, the news, preparing for the day, then work, then the to-do list, paying attention to my wife, and the side business. If you had asked, I would have said God was on the throne, just not right this second or for this particular emergency. At the same time, I would have said I was happy – mostly – but I remember not caring if I lived or died. I wasn’t suicidal, I was just empty.
Have you ever noticed how similar goals and gods are? World renown author and speaker Jordan Peterson pointed out each requires sacrifice and obedience. Even simple goals. If I want a sandwich, I must sacrifice my seat on the couch and obey the rules of food construction. Everyone’s lives are full of goals – even if the goal is to be lazy.
How do I know when my goal becomes my god? By who I obey. If my neighbors are rude, and ego demands retaliation or at least that I despise them, do I obey? I’ll have to disobey God’s law of forgiveness and grace. When money is tight and practicality demands I worry and fear, God says pray, work hard, and get good counsel – but don’t worry. Which do I obey?
Even a God-given goal can graduate into a god. George Muller spent his life caring for orphans. He famously said he spent one hour with God each morning, and if the day was really busy, he’d spend two. Daniel in the bible went home three times a day to pray. Daniel was running a country. Can you imagine how disruptive that trip home would be to his work? Those two men recognised their daily demands as little gods. But they didn’t just put God first – they went the extra mile to rub the little gods’ noses in it.
When Jesus talks about food and clothes and saving up resources, he says the Godless chase after these things. Your heavenly father knows you need them. If you want these things, rub their noses in it – seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness. Then all those things will be given – “much more” than Solomon in all his splendor.
In Isaiah, God asks about priorities. Why spend your money on what doesn’t really feed you, and your labor on what doesn’t satisfy? Listen, he says, listen to me. Feed your life on right things and you will delight in the choicest of foods.
The choicest of foods? My I-don’t-care-if-live-or-die life didn’t feel like a feast. It reminded me of the times I’d fasted; my body screamed for food, and I only drank water. It gave me the sense of a full stomach while still leaving it a giant gnawing hole. That’s what my life felt like. So I asked God what was going on.
“You know what’s going on,” he said. “I gave you blessings and a calling, and you made them gods.”
I put my face in my hands. “I really have, haven’t I?” So I made a promise to myself – NEVER again. I thought about Daniel and George, and decided that not only was it time to put God on the throne, I was going to rub the little god’s faces in it.
So no matter how busy my day, I always spend at least an hour with my maker. I’ve had trips to the airport where I was only going to get a couple hours of sleep. I still got up an hour early. Everything waits until after – especially the stock market.
Since I started doing that, I’ve never been sick, I’ve accomplished all my goals, and I’ve won every stock-trade. Ha! I wish. I’ve made some bad business deals. There have been days I’ve had to apologize to my wife and kids for being crabby and short-tempered. There are others where I’ve been so brain-dead-tired I can’t do anything right. I remembered Dallas Willard’s advice, about doing what’s right and letting God clean up the mess. I decided to keep God on the throne, and just let the chips fall.
For a years it seemed like nothing had changed. God hadn’t really made my new priorities worthwhile. But one morning, I suddenly realized something was different. That gnawing emptiness was gone. I still had problems, but they were like leaves floating on the surface of a lake of contentment and satisfaction.
That wasn’t the only thing that changed. The things that had gone wrong still worked out right. Often it took so long I forgot about it. But when I looked back, when I’d put God utterly first, he always stepped in. It wasn’t that he necessarily fixed the issue, it was that the problem mysteriously worked out better than if it had gone the way I wanted. With God on the throne it was as if, even if I took a wrong step, he spun the world underneath me so that I landed exactly where I should have been.
The stock market is still addictive, and often, life still feels like a losing battle. But I’m not empty, in fact, a lot of the time my heart is like fireworks. And I know in my deepest soul I’m right where I’m supposed to be. The same thing’s waiting for you.
If you just do one thing, everything else is taken care of. ~Dallas Willard.