Scripture
20And we know that the Son of God has come, and he has given us understanding so that we can know the true God. And now we live in fellowship with the true God because we live in fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the only true God, and he is eternal life. 21Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts. 1 John 5:20-21
Observation
John has just spent the letter warning of the evils of this world and making clear that the cure is to abide in Christ continually, consistently, and constantly. This knowledge of the Son of God is not mere mental assent, it is an actual experience. It’s clear that God has to give us this understanding. It’s that moment when a man or women has their mind opened to the earth shattering reality that the God of the universe wants to have fellowship, relationship, and friendship with us! Once we step into this intimacy with the only true God who is eternal life personified why would we trade that for anything else, for everything else would be less than the best. Yet, John ends the letter with the most sobering of warnings. It is possible to trade positions by shifting our attentions to idols. Anything we look to other than Christ can become an idol in our life and take that primary position in our hearts. He starts this warning by calling us “dear children” as if to remind us that, like a child, we can be easily distracted from that which matters most and find ourselves in a deficit of attention.
Application
As I sit here at Ascend Coffee shop there’s people yelling for the attention of the large local trades group meeting behind me. It feels like that’s exactly what this passage in Scripture is doing. In fact, just before reading this, Dad shared some verses out of Isaiah 30:20-23 about paying attention to God’s voice above the noise. Then, Bob said he had just read that verse yesterday. This was the very verse I had started out the message series with on hearing God. Hmmm…. I wonder if God is trying to tell me something? The way to avoid the distraction of attraction to idols in our lives taking the place in our hearts is to pay attention to the Lord’s voice. Here’s how The Message paraphrase puts this passage: “Oh yes, people of Zion, citizens of Jerusalem, your time of tears is over. Cry for help and you’ll find it’s grace and more grace. The moment he hears, he’ll answer. Just as the Master kept you alive during the hard times, he’ll keep your teacher alive and present among you. Your teacher will be right there, local and on the job, urging you on whenever you wander left or right: “This is the right road. Walk down this road.” You’ll scrap your expensive and fashionable god-images. You’ll throw them in the trash as so much garbage, saying, “Good riddance!” How do we do this? How do make sure Jesus alone has our attention and our affection? How do throw the distracting idols in the trash on a daily basis? Author and teacher Paul Angone suggests our devotion to idols over Jesus is really determined by where we are paying attention: “Your attention is a currency and it's even in the phrase, you know, pay attention. It's built in there. You know, that's what we're told to do pay attention and it really is like you're making a transaction with all these different things that you're paying attention to. For many of us it's like, we're going outside our front door and we just got twenty dollar bills, here's a $20, here's a $20, you know, entertain me for 5 seconds, and I'll give you a $20, these are the ways that we're spending our attention. So even looking at it from a financial transactional standpoint, it's helpful for me to even ask the question, “Ok, where I am? Am I investing my my attention into things that I want to invest in? Am I building that kind of compound interest with what I'm paying attention to? Also, “Where am I in debt with my attention, where am I enslaved to with my attention? Because where I'm spending my time and my attention, well, that is showing what I'm also placing my importance, and my worth, and my values.” What if, over the next week whenever we are tempted to give our attention to something that’s free we asked ourselves, “If this cost me $20 would I still spend my time on this? Or, should I save this $20 for something more deserving?”
Prayer
Jesus, whether it’s the loud group behind me, the troubles in front of me, the temptations I’ll face, or the desire to escape there are so many things vying for my attention. What has my attention has my affection and ultimately has my devotion. I don’t want to spend my attention on the worthless and trading it for the precious words You are speaking to me. I repent for emptying my wallet on so many things that have so little value when what my heart really needs is to simply hear from You.
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