Cleaning House

Isaiah 31:7 For in that day every man will cast away his silver idols and his gold idols, which your sinful hands have made for you as a sin.

For me, today was one of those "in that day[s]", in that I took some steps towards casting away some of the idols in my life. The idols I dealt with today were family and conflict avoidance.

I've mentioned at SG for a few weeks that I'm considering a GI trip later this year. However, I had yet to break the news to my parents. My immediate family is very much a stay-close-to-home type of family. None of us have been outside of North America. Even when we ventured out of the States to Montreal for an Expos game, we didn't stay in Canada after the game--"let's just get back to Plattsburgh." So the news of my interest in a 2-week trip to Southeast Asia is sure going to be a shocker. Through Todd's current sermon series, I realized that my reluctance to move forward on this trip for fear of family concerns was nothing more than idolizing my family--putting them on the throne in place of God.

Through the wise counsel of one of the First Light guys this morning, I realized that a big part of my reluctance to tell my family was conflict avoidance. True, true. I go to great lengths to avoid conflict in all areas of my life, and I found myself doing it here again. To put the brakes on pursuing this trip because I'm not willing to face a little conflict with my parents suddenly looked and sounded a lot like idolizing the lack of conflict (and you know what they say about things that look and sound like ducks...). I was making peace the driving force in my life--not the Prince of Peace.

So, tonight--with much prayer and anticipation--I cleared away the idols and told my parents all about the trip. You know what? Worrying about it was much worse than actually doing something about it! They took it well. They asked all the questions I thought they would ask, but they never challenged my desire to go or tried to talk me out of it. Though I was willing to face conflict as a means of putting that idol away, in the end, there wasn't any conflict! Praise be to God. A small but powerful example to me that when God comes first, everything else really does fall into place.