We were designed by God for God so why do we so often exchange our Creator for created things? In a word…sin. Sin has seduced us into believing that created things, idols of the heart, can give to us what only our Creator can give. They promise what they cannot deliver and when we seek to find our identity in things smaller than God, we eventually become smaller than God has called us to be. “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25). Sin has sent all of humanity into a downward spiral of serving an endless supply of God replacements.
Sin has driven us away from the Creator and toward the creation..away from the spiritual and toward the physical. In exchanging the truth for a lie, we have exchanged our vertical relationship with all things horizontal. The problem is not that all things horizontal are evil. Relationships are good. Jobs are good. Hobbies are good. Service projects are good. They only become evil when we use them as replacements for our relationship with God. We are never to find our identity in created things. We are only to find our identity in our Creator. As my pastor Tullian likes to say, “Good things become bad things when they become ultimate things!”
So what have you been using as God replacements in your life lately? Your work? Your mate? Your children? Your church service? Your physical attractiveness? Your finances? Created things were never designed by God to sustain us in this life or the next. They were never designed to do what only God can do…provide eternal meaning, purpose, and significance. Let us examine our hearts today and take all of our God replacements, lay them at the foot of the cross, and replace them with God. This is life. This is the gospel. This is grace for the race. NEVER FORGET THAT…AMEN!
Grace for the Race 
This post nailed it. We see a great divide in the “United” States. I believe this nails the root of the problem. There are those that worship the creation, and those that worship the creator. We spend too much time trying to win people to our political views and the like instead of being salt to lead them to our Creator. When people finally know Him and study His word, these other things will be handled by Him.
Amen Doc. The Author and Perfector of our faith is the only answer to the questions of life. Sin has seduced us into pursuing the “thing” rather than the King.
Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Tommy:
you not only hit this one with 100% accuracy, but your timing could not have been so well designed as to coincide with the recent Bru Haa Haa generated by actions rescinding the invitation of Franklin Gramham to speak at the National day of Prayer. YOu talk about ” Sin has seduced us into believing that created things, idols of the heart, can give to us what only our Creator can give. They promise what they cannot deliver and when we seek to find our identity in things smaller than God”. One of the first idols I personally recongize is that we try to be politically and spiritually correct for everyone (fashionable). I am attaching two News releases that occurred within the last few days regarding National Prayer Day. Both of these articles exhort some of the inherent need for man to exchange the truth of God for a lie that if we please everyone earthly, then we have done the “Right thing”:
Pentagon Rescinds Franklin Graham’s Invitation, Al Sharpton is Welcome at White House
By Colleen Raezler (Bio | Archive)
Fri, 04/23/2010 – 10:21 ET
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The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham’s involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF’s complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam “wicked” and “evil” and his lack of apology for those words.
Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, “This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue.”
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/colleen-raezler/2010/04/23/pentagon-rescinds-graham-s-invitation-sharpton-welcome-white-house#ixzz0mDCIFxZn
President Obama visits, prays with ailing Rev. Billy Graham
BY RICHARD SISK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Monday, April 26th 2010, 4:00 AM
Souza/AP
President Obama ended his North Carolina vacation with a visit to home of ailing evangelist Billy Graham, 91, in Montreat, N.C.
WASHINGTON – President Obama met and prayed with the Rev. Billy Graham for the first time Sunday – days after his administration dumped the ailing evangelist’s son from a national prayer program.
During the half-hour visit, the first by a President to Graham’s home in Montreat, N.C., the 91-year-old “Thunderer” gave Bibles to Obama and the First Lady.
Obama was “extraordinarily gratified that he took the time to meet with him,” White House spokesman Bill Burton said of Graham, who has met and counseled all Presidents since Harry Truman.
Last week, the Pentagon dropped the Rev. Franklin Graham from the program for the May 6 National Day of Prayer for calling Islam an “evil religion.”
Franklin Graham, who attended the meeting with his father, said Billy Graham talked about golf with Obama and they reminisced about Chicago, where the elder Graham attended Wheaton College.
“The conversation was very cordial, very nice,” the younger Graham said. “When the President got ready to leave, the President prayed for my father, my father prayed for him.”
Obama confided, like other Presidents before him, how lonely, demanding and humbling the presidency can be, Graham spokesman Larry Ross said.
“That is a discussion that Mr. Graham has had with previous Presidents who realize not only the demands but the loneliness of the job,” Ross said. “And they’re humbled by that.”
Although I am typically less vocal on this type of issue, your wonderful and inspiring blog posting led me to have to express just how true, when people open their eyes and ears, that your comments articulate.
Thanks for the wonderful articles and I will “Never Forget how wonderful our Lord, Jesus Christ is”.
Thanks for the wonderful blog on “God’s Replacements”.
As Always In Christ;
Mike Gordon
Brother Mike,
Thanks for your observations and the recent news releases. The world would have us buy into its “rhetoric” when what they need most is “rescue” from our Redeemer. May God give us grace for our race that our lives would be living espistles of God’s plan of world-wide rescue for a helpless & hopeless humanity.