Getting Rid Of God

After the Philistines captured the Ark of God, they took it from the battleground at Ebenezer to the town of Ashdod. They carried the Ark of God into the temple of Dagon and placed it beside an idol of Dagon. But when the citizens of Ashdod went to see it the next morning, Dagon had fallen with his face to the ground in front of the Ark of the LORD! So they took Dagon and put him in his place again. 1 Samuel 5:1-3

THE PHILISTINE SOLDIERS assumed they had prevailed over Israelite forces because their god Dagon had proven superior to Yahweh. So they placed the Ark of the Covenant, which represented Yahweh himself, next to the statue of Dagon as one of his worshipers. But the next morning when they came to Dagon’s temple, the idol was facedown before the Ark, apparently bowing before it. So what did the Philistines do? They propped Dagon back up. But that didn’t work either. The next morning Dagon was facedown again. But this time his head and hands had broken off.

The Philistines had the presence of God in their midst exposing the impotence of their false god. So did they get rid of their false god to worship the one true God? “The rulers discussed it and replied, ‘Move it to the town of Gath’” (1 Samuel 5:8). They went to great lengths to keep their sin and get rid of God.

It is a grace from God when he exposes the powerlessness of our idols. It doesn’t feel like grace; it feels like conviction or even loss. We find ourselves grasping and desperate. But then we have a choice. We can turn away from whatever we’re looking to for significance and security and turn instead toward God to meet our needs. Or we can keep trying to prop up our idol, giving it another chance to satisfy us. We can do everything in our power to rid God from our lives —or at least some parts of them —or we can invite God to have his way in the whole of our lives.

Lord, we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking that you can comfortably coexist among our idols, that your supreme holiness can be compartmentalized, that your powerful hands can be tied so as not to interfere with the things we’ve decided we must have to be happy.

As we pray for you to show yourself strong in ________’s life, we know that will mean knocking down the idols in her life, and that they will not be struck down without a struggle. Show us what it means to encourage her as you deal with her idols one by one.