Riverside Community Church Blog

This is a longer post than normal but I hope you’ll take a few extra minutes and learn from part of my testimony.

“Counterfeit God’s” by Tim Keller is an excellent book. His book, has helped me to connect some dots in my life that I would like to share with you. The premise of Keller’s book is that every human heart is waging the same battle. Every human heart in the world has the same deep desires for purpose, significance, fulfillment, contentment, security, refuge, acceptance, approval, self-worth, and love. They are all good desires that God Himself put in us. All of these desires are meant to be found in Him. Instead, because of sin, we are separated from God and we don’t realize it or believe it, and we go to created things to fulfill those desires. The created things become “idols” in our lives, and idols always and inevitably fail us, leaving us wanting, and have a devastating effect on our lives, even in the most subtle of ways. I want to share how this played out in how I came to Christ. God weaved a few threads in my life and they find their origins in a seminal year of my life - 2008. But my main purpose is to show you how masterful God is!

Thread #1
I was not a believer of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. After graduating from college in 2002, I embarked on a career as a PGA Golf Professional. I couldn’t stay in a job for more than 1 year. Where ever I was, I always had to have more and it was impossible for me to be in the moment, my eyes were always on the future. As it turned out, I did obtain more. I kept earning a bigger and better job, so naturally I thought what I was doing was right. After jumping around from job to job, always pursuing more, in 2007 I obtained a job at what is, by most accounts, one of the best golf courses in the country. I was right where I wanted to be and I thought I had made it. I thought, “How could I ever feel like leaving this place?” But about a year into my job at one of the best golf courses in the country, in 2008, I got antsy and I felt like leaving again! It was at this point, something inside of me started churning. I asked myself, “How could this be? I am at one of the best golf courses in the country, and I want to leave for something better?” For the first time, I felt like I was chasing something that didn’t exist. Despite the churning inside, I didn’t have answers to my questions so I kept doing what I was doing because I didn’t know what else to do.

Thread #2
During my career as a PGA Golf Professional, I was obsessed with success. I kept growing in my career experiences and became pretty good at what I did. Later in my career, I won awards and served on local, regional and national committees. I was, on some level, making a positive difference in the industry I was in. Because of the success I was achieving, I thought, “I must be doing things the right way, so I’ll keep doing what I’m doing”. In 2008, despite achieving what I had achieved and working at one of the best golf courses in the country, I noticed that I didn’t truly feel successful! In the midst of feeling like I was chasing something that didn’t exist, I also subtly began questioning the definition of success. I felt like a hamster on a wheel. Making a lot of movement and achieving a lot, but not really going anywhere in my heart. My heart seemed like it was at a standstill. For the first time, perhaps I could sense a deadness in my heart. Despite this, I didn’t have answers to my questions so I kept doing what I was doing because I didn’t know what else to do.

Thread #3
Right before I graduated from college, I had broken up with an on-and-off girlfriend of four years. For about five years after college, I couldn’t hold a relationship with a woman because I was so obsessed with success. If I ever felt like a girlfriend was intruding on my path to success, I would end the relationship, and I was okay with that. Because my career kept prospering, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. Five years after I graduated, my ex-girlfriend and I reunited and began seeing each other again on some level. I thought, “This is it, it’s meant to be, how could it not be?” Despite reuniting with my ex-girlfriend and perceiving it as “meant to be”, I knew it wouldn’t intrude on my path to success because it was long distance. But it was fun, I had a girlfriend, and she was long distance so it came with some strings that were “unattached”, and I didn’t know what else to do.

Now I want to start tying these threads together.

The Knot
I was working at one of the best golf courses in the country and I was gaining a lot of steam in the industry, and I had re-united with my ex-girlfriend, but I had a lot of questions festering in my heart. In July 2008, I met another woman (my waitress at Outback Steakhouse). The timing couldn’t have been worse. Or perhaps the timing couldn’t have been better. In this other woman, I met Jesus. She gave me my first Bible, I began to read scripture for the first time and seeing for myself what it really says, and I couldn’t stop. In scripture, I personally encountered Jesus and started uncovering answers to the questions I had been asking. In meeting this other woman, she also unknowingly prompted me to view my ex-girlfriend that I reunited with, not with negative eyes, but with clearer eyes. I felt like I had a decision to make - my ex-girlfriend I reunited with? Or this new woman? I allowed my ex-girlfriend to fade away and began investing in this relationship with this new woman.

Through the threads, I’ve shown you what was happening on a surface level. But now I want to open up my 2008 heart and excavate it for you. First, I couldn’t stay in a job for more than one year because deep down in my heart, I was on a search for contentment and I thought a bigger and better job would take me to the “Promised Land”. Second, in my obsession with success, deep down in my heart, I was on a search for significance, and I thought the more I achieved the more significant I would feel and the more purposeful my life would be and that would take me to the “Promised Land”. Third, although I didn’t know it at the time, I was heading into a disastrous situation with my ex-girlfriend I reunited with because deep down in my heart, I was vulnerable and blinded by my desperation for love and companionship. I thought that this was the woman that was going to take me to the “Promised Land”.

Do you see God’s hand in all of this? Do you see how masterful He is? But hold on, there’s more! About seven months after I met this woman and after I met Jesus, and after I believed in the Gospel...I got LAID OFF from my dream job! The contentment and significance I was searching for through my job and career had failed me. My career began to tailspin and I had to get a job at a place I wouldn’t have pursued otherwise. It was difficult, but I was now in the arms of a loving God and He was teaching me. My old self was unraveling, but my new self was being woven and sturdied. It’s no coincidence that I got laid off from my dream job AFTER I believed in the Gospel and gave my life to Christ. God was stacking Himself up against the idols of my life and putting their brokenness and His perfection on clear display for me to see. He was saying, “You had a relationship with your idols, now you have a relationship with Me, there is NO competition!” Ever since then, God has been gradually growing me in the knowledge of His Gospel and the deep nuances of the heart.

A better job, achievements, and a girlfriend were never going to satisfy the deep desires of contentment, significance, and love that were festering in my heart. They can’t do something only God can. When we make a job, a career, a significant other, a child, drugs, alcohol, beauty, money, or a political ideology everything in our life, when we make them ultimate, god-things, and we lose them or they are threatened, we do crazy things. Idols are the things or people in our lives that, if we don’t have them, we tailspin. They are the things that when threatened or taken away from us, we react in uncontrolled anger, affecting ourselves and everyone around us. For something that has no voice and doesn’t speak, our idols sure do get the most of us, and we limp around because of them as they continuously let us down (1 Kings 18:26-29). For something that has no eye’s, that doesn’t see, hear, eat, or smell (Deuteronomy 4:28), they sure do have a way of controlling us! For something that doesn’t exist, our idols sure do have a way of brainwashing us!

Our idols deteriorate us and suck the life out of us. God is the only thing that can make our hearts beat again and filled with true joy, fulfillment, and purpose. We’ll never know what true significance is until we find it in the Creator of the universe in Jesus Christ. We’ll never know what true security is until we find it in the loving arms of Jesus, not a spouse, a trust fund, an insurance policy or a bonus. We’ll never know what true acceptance is until we know how much God loves us just as we are. We’ll never know what true purpose is until we understand that God doesn’t want to leave us as we are but to grow us, form us, and mold us into something far greater than we could ever imagine. We’ll never know what true contentment is until we know how much God loves us right where we are. We’ll never know what it means to be truly approved until we know how we are fully and completely approved by God in Jesus Christ. We’ll never know how much we truly matter until we know how much we matter in the eyes of the living God in Jesus Christ, who created us for Himself. We’ll never know what true refuge is until we are under the arms of God, spread over us like eagles wings.

The early threads of my testimony in 2008 are just a small example of what He continues to do in my life. Destroying our idols is not a one time event when we give our lives to Christ, it is a lifelong process. My 2016 heart is still being excavated and my 2030 and 2050 hearts will be as well! Destroying our idols is not just an initiation into life with Christ, it IS life with Christ. God will not share room in our hearts with our idols. God will not sign a treaty with them. God knows that giving Him the deed of our hearts entirely to Him is for our good because there is nothing more significant, fulfilling, secure, and purposeful than having God completely meet the desires of our heart.

There’s a reason why the first of the Ten Commandments is “You shall love the Lord your God”, and the second is “You shall have no other gods but me”. Everybody has a story about idols in their life. Idols bring chaos, Jesus brings peace. We have to prayerfully identify our idols by looking closely at our lives, seeing what we are doing and honestly evaluating why we’re doing the things we’re doing. What do you daydream about? What consumes your heart and mind and motives? It may be there where you’ll find the idol of your life. What makes you uncontrollably angry if the thing/person/political ideology you love is taken away or threatened? It may be there where you’ll find the idol of your life. What can you not live without? If it’s something other than God Himself, then it is there that you’ll find the idol in your life.

Jobs, careers, money, cars, sex, children, spouses, parents, and political views aren’t bad things, but we are easily seduced by them and make them the vehicles in our search for the deep desires of our heart. When one idol is uprooted, another will inevitably grow, and it must be uprooted and replaced with God Himself in Jesus Christ. When we believe in our heart the Gospel of Jesus Christ, believe in his death and resurrection, that on the cross the perfectly obedient Jesus came to bear on himself the penalty that we deserve for our sin and rebellion from God, the penalty for our pursuit of idols in our lives, we receive the free gift of forgiveness and salvation, and true freedom in this life. Jesus is the “Promised Land” we are desperately seeking! God said of His Son, Jesus, “This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased”. When we believe in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and surrender our self-righteous, self-salvation effort, Jesus’ righteousness and reputation to the Father is freely attributed to us. Of you, in Christ alone, God says, “This is my child, with whom I am well pleased”. We can trust Jesus for our salvation and to meet the deep desires of our hearts because he waged the battle that we are in, and he came out unscathed. For 40 days in the wilderness, Satan tempted Jesus with pleasure, significance and power, but Jesus had none of it. He knew Satan was selling idols and he knew that there was nothing more pleasurable, significant or powerful than his intimate relationship with the Father. And so it is with us. We will never know what love truly is until we have looked upon the cross of Christ and believe that because God loves us, He laid his life down for us so we could enjoy the benefits that Jesus had of an uninhibited relationship with the Father where all his deepest desires were met.

P.S. That woman I met, the waitress at Outback Steakhouse, is now my wife and the mother of my one, and soon-to-be two daughters.

How masterful God is!