Do You Want a Cow or God?

Do you want a cow or God? This is the question I asked our XMC student body yesterday? Sometimes I seem to want a cow. I'm thankful that God refuses to allow me to kneel at the feet of Big Beef.

In Exodus 32 (one of my favorite chapters in the whole Bible) we read that the Israelites made a golden calf and worshipped it after encountering the one true God. They had seen God's delivering power (setting them free from the Egyptians), seen great miracles (Red Sea parting), been provided for daily by the Word of God (food from heaven), etc. etc. Yet they still preferred to worship a golden calf?

It sounds so dumb! I think I actually called them idiots out loud. ....but it seems that I am constantly trying to worship a cow. No, I don't have a golden calf set up in my house. But it's so easy to create a "cow". Sometimes before you know it, it seems like it just "popped out of the fire" (like Aaron said in the Bible).

After all the cow was tangible. To them it was God in their mind; they called it God - the one that delivered them from Egypt. They offered to it, they sacrificed for it, they sang praise to it. They worshiped it.

But it was also limited, not living, created,very small. And much easier to grasp.

I think we set up cows sometimes in our life. We try to dumb down God, to make Him into something He is not. We set up a whole structure of worship with do's and do nots so that we can worship like we want. And our faith that once was daily dependent upon a living God becomes a ritualistic worship to one of our own creations.

We make God limited in our minds. Or we try to mix or old life in with our new life. (One of the Egyptian gods was a calf)......which is completely unacceptable. (over 3,000 men were killed for it)

Again, I'm thankful God won't let me settle for Big Beef. And that He is not content with remaining small and limited in my mind.