I sat 20 plus rows back, Bible app open, pen and sermon outline ready, fully prepared to take notes on everyone else’s spiritual condition. Our pastor had launched a series on the Ten Commandments, and that Sunday he named comfort and approval as idols. That caught me off guard. I glanced toward the front, spying a certain someone I hoped was paying close attention, and settled into the comfortable posture of a woman who had this commandment handled.
Exodus 20:3 (ESV) — “You shall have no other gods before me.”
Comfort and Approval as Idols Hiding in Plain Sight
Comfort and approval. Those were the two idols that landed closest to home, though I didn’t know it yet. Comfort, he said, is the quiet insistence that life stay convenient, that nothing be asked of us beyond what fits neatly into an easy afternoon. Approval is the need for someone, anyone, to notice we’re doing it right. Neither one sounded like a sin worth confessing. That’s what made them so easy to miss.
I nodded along, mentally filing the point under my written in category of “things other people need to hear.”
Comfort and approval never announce themselves as idols. They just quietly move into the seat next to God’s throne.
Tweet
A Roast, a Husband, and a Reckoning
I rode home that afternoon rather pleased with myself. Whatever else needed work, I had this commandment covered. I went home and started preparing our afternoon meal. Ok, serving. Not really preparing, since roast, potatoes, and carrots fixed the night before and set to cook in the crockpot that morning doesn’t count as actual preparing.
My husband set down his fork partway through the meal. “That was a good sermon,” he said. “I’d never considered most of what Pastor Jeff said. But since listening is different than applying, I have some work to do.”
Conviction hit like my overbaked pound cake, heavy and unpalatable. If my husband, who I’d assumed needed the message far more than I did, was willing to say that out loud, what did that mean for the woman who’d spent the whole service watching everyone else instead of herself?
Little Children, Not Experts
I spent the rest of that day with the Lord instead of my usual Sunday routine, which is its own small admission of how comfort had been running my schedule all along. A line from a sermon I’d heard earlier came back to me, something the pastor had pulled from Jerry Bridges. However knowledgeable about Scripture we may be, we need to approach it each day as little children, asking the Holy Spirit to teach us. Not to confirm what we already believe. Not to defend a favorite doctrine. To be taught. I hadn’t meant to call comfort and approval as idols, not out loud, not even to myself. But there I was, pleased with a meal I hadn’t worked hard at and a heart I hadn’t examined.
I prayed something simple. “Lord, You had Moses write those commandments on stone. To me that means permanence. Help me through the rest of this series to apply every one to me, not to others. Change me.”
That prayer reframed the whole series for me. Comfort stopped being a harmless preference and started looking like a throne I’d quietly built. Approval stopped feeling like a normal desire to be liked. It started looking like handing someone else the final word on who I was.
From My Living Room to Cecelia’s Pew
That Sunday found its way into Keeper of My Heart. There’s a scene where Cecelia sits in church, glancing toward Martha Sneed, the banker’s wife, certain the woman isn’t listening. Cecelia feels entirely justified, confident someone else needs the message more than she does. Then Scripture and circumstance corner Cecelia the same way they cornered me, until she can’t keep pointing at someone else’s pew.
I didn’t set out to write conviction into that scene. I set out to write a woman like me.
A Free Way to Read It
Keeper of My Heart is free today. If you’d like to meet Cecelia and the moment that started with a sermon much like mine, download it while the offer lasts. If you’re reading this after the free window closes, the book is still available anytime through Kindle Unlimited, and many of my titles are also available in audiobook for the days your hands are busy with something more like preparing than pressing a button.
Keeper of My Heart is Book 6 in my Discerning God’s Best series.
If you’ve ever caught yourself glancing at someone else’s pew, I’d love to hear what God showed you about your own. Drop a comment, I read every one.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualified purchases. This does not increase the price you pay.
I just read this immediately after reading the sermon my online pastor preached yesterday on judging others. (I try to pay attention when God sends me the same message through different windows.) It’s easy to say “Oh, I’m not like that, I don’t do that,” at home. But yesterday I had to leave my cozy little nook, and go out in public. Almost immediately, I realized I was judging, and tried to turn it around. A very plus size woman? Instead of thinking “ew, she’s much fatter than me, and wearing a sundress?” I was able to say “good for her, not letting people fat shame her.”
But the parent who let their 3 year old crawl around on the dirty floor in McDonald’s? Yeah, I judged them. Even though I never did that with my kids, I had other parenting issues. But now that God has drawn my attention to it, I’m going to try to be alert to thinking “wow, THAT other person has problems!”
I so understand the multiple message! I’ve found the same to be true for me. If I hear it in more than one place, I pay much closer attention.