“You shall have no other gods before Me.” Exodus 20:3
The devil’s three-fold mission to kill, steal, and destroy (John 10:10), to keep as many people as possible from giving their lives to Christ for the promise of a forever relationship with God and to make miserable as many Christ followers as possible and to keep them from spreading the Gospel message and helping to build God’s Kingdom of Christ followers, seems to be getting helped along by a powerful what may be a surprise to some weapon. The cell phone. The very piece of technology that was intended to help people communicate with one another has in the hands of the devil become a deceptive, dangerous, and deadly weapon.
When this world more than ever is in dire need of repenting of sin and believing in and turning to Christ as Lord, of living for Him, of looking upward to love, worship, and serve God almighty in heaven, and of looking downward at the open pages of the Bible, to learn how to live according to His ways to be pleasing in His sight, and of looking outward at a lost, broken, and dying world to love and serve others in Christ’s name and help them find and follow Him, much of this world has its heart, eyes, attention, and focus glued to its cell phone. Is it not an obsession for some? Instead of paying rapt attention to the Lord and His Word, of loving, seeking, honoring, adoring, revering, hearing, and obeying God continually throughout the day and night, are some of us not shoving God to the wayside as we rush to our cell phones to fix our attention steadfastly and adoringly on our calls, voice mails, emails, text messages, Internet, games, calendars, weather, you name it?
God’s greatest commands are to love Him with all our hearts and to love others. His 10 commandments make clear we are not to worship other gods and not to make images of gods and bow down to them. What exactly are we doing with our cell phones? Ever watched carefully what people are doing with their spare time? Loving the Lord? Seeking Him? Studying His Word? Worshiping Him? Loving others? Sharing the Gospel? Helping people follow Christ? Serving God? Serving others? Are we spending more time with our cell phones than with God? Are we distracted from God by our phones? Not even seeing opportunities to love and serve others because we are so consumed with our cell phones?
Watch a family at a restaurant. A mom with her kid in a stroller. People at the bus stop. Work breaks. Etc. There are appropriate ways and times to use a cell phone. But when they have become our gods, when we spend more time with our phones than the Lord, when we continually stare down at them instead of upward at Christ and outward to a world in need, are we not worshiping them instead of God? Is God calling you to repent?