Can I Return to Leadership after Church Discipline?
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Can I Return to Leadership after Church Discipline?

5 Ways People Worship Themselves

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Tim Keller stated: "If your god never disagrees with you, you might just be worshiping an idealized version of yourself." It turns out that the gods people design in their minds think pretty much like the people themselves. Here are five ways people go about designing their own god to worship.

1. They dismiss the existence of God.

People put it out of their minds that one true God could possibly exist who created them and upholds certain standards they must keep. The gods of their imaginations don't have any problems with their personal beliefs and actions. Thinking this way wont change anything about the real God, but it will affect people's current and eternal relationship with him.

2. They decide what their deity should be like.

People give the god of their design the attributes and powers that they think he/she/it should have. They also decide what qualities they dont want their god to have, including the right to require anything of them that they would prefer not to do.

3. They predetermine what should happen after they die.

Many people choose to believe in an afterlife that appeals to their own personal sense of what is fair and just. If they dont like the Bible's teaching regarding the reality of hell, they may design in their minds an eternity where everyone gets to live in some kind of paradiseexcept, of course, for the really bad people.

4. They dismiss evidence of God in creation and the Bible.

People look away from Gods revelation of himself in creation and the Bible and choose to believe alternate explanations regarding how the world and humans came into existence. Even though the earth is filled with countless varieties of creatures and elements that all point to an ultimate designer, many people choose to attribute the worlds existence to happenstance. Instead of investigating the truth claims, historical accuracy, and divine inspiration of the Bible, they prematurely dismiss Scripture as mere writings by men that are a mixture of truth and fable.

5. They refuse to submit to any authority except those whom they choose to obey.

In order to be self-ruling, people cant let others tell them what to do. They must be the masters of their own ships without accountability to anyone, including their spouse, boss, government, or creator.

God wants and commands everyone to worship him alone (Deut. 6:13; Luke 4:8). The gods of our imaginations have no power to love or rescue us from anything, including ourselves. Seek to know and love the one true God who created us in his image, and sent his Son into the world to redeem and restore us to a right relationship with him.

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Le Ann Trees

Le Ann is a writer, editor, speaker, wife, and mom who enjoys the Southern California lifestyle, including flip-flops, the beach, riding electric bicycles along the 101, and an occasional salted caramel Americano from Lofty Coffee in Solana Beach. She is exceedingly grateful for both the loving kindness of many people and the sound Christian doctrine that helped her to keep on living after her son died in a skiing accident in 2006. She holds a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Westminster Seminary California. Le Ann is managing editor of Beautiful Christian Life.