Like I said in the beginning, if we really believe in God and that He does and will interact in our lives, then our words and actions will show that.
Secondly, we need to know that God commands us to be in control of our thoughts and emotions all the time. That's one reason He tells us to take our thoughts captive and replace those that are lies with His Truth. There's so much written in His Word about how we're to control our thoughts and feelings, that it's rare to find a single page that doesn't say something about it in one way or another. When Adam sinned, his mind was corrupted by that sin and that was passed on to his children, and ultimately to us. That's why no unbeliever can understand God or His word unless He's being enlightened by the Holy Spirit. Once we're saved, that doesn't mean that our minds are suddenly supernaturally healed of that corruption though. Instead, God gives us His Holy Spirit to dwell within us and teach us what His Word says. The "trick" is that we have to ask Him to teach us and listen to Him when He does. This is why even someone who is saved and has the Holy Spirit within them, can read the Bible and still not understand it. Without God's teaching and guiding, we will simply apply man's corrupted philosophy to God's Word.
However, with the Lord's guidance and teaching, and if we are applying His Word to our lives - living it, doing what it says, and not just reading it, the longer we're in His Word, the more and more our minds will be transformed to be more like His. They'll still have the corruption of sin, but because we've filled our minds with His Word and reflect on His Word so much, that will in a sense overcome the corruption to a large degree. At least to the point where we're able to have stored so much of the Lord's Word in our minds and hearts that our thoughts, feelings and our life itself, reflect Him more then the corruption of sin. Still, even then we can never rely on our own knowledge, but instead must continuously rely on His Word. Our minds won't be without corruption though until that great day when we finally receive the completion of our salvation and receive our new bodies, with our new minds and hearts that don't have the taint of sin.
As I've heard so often said, and it's true, the battle is for our hearts & minds. God wants us to love Him with all our hearts and minds and strength. So that's why Satan does his best to keep our minds as corrupted as possible so we can't escape him.
Why do you think that Satan has set forth the worldview that we have to "love ourselves"? This isn't anything new. It was one of the big things that brought down the Roman Empire eventually. We're following the very same path they went down, and they followed Satan's idea that we should make ourselves "number one" and "love ourselves" first and foremost. This is what Satan's worldview has taught from the time Satan fell from his heavenly position. This is so ingrained in us all now, along with the self esteem garbage the worlds mixed in with it, that most people never even question whether or not it's scriptural. They're so used to it that it's like the law of gravity to them - it just "is". And I include most Christians in this too.
This is how Satan set us up to have ourselves as a false god, and for some people, to have our community or nation as a false god as well. One red flag to look for to see if you've made yourself a false god, is if there's a lot of what I call the self sins going on in your life. One of the big self sins is "pride" and it's also one of the few that don't have the word "self" attached to it. Often people think that we must be proud of ourselves to make ourselves into a false god or idol, but while that certainly happens, it's not always true. A person who's depressed is often actually taking pride in their self pity in a perverted sort of way, although they don't usually realize it. They're often so consumed by themselves that they can't see the forest for all the trees. It often takes someone else to get them to step back from themselves long enough so they can actually see what they're doing. In a strange way though, that's very much like what Satan did when he fell. He was totally and completely consumed with himself -though not due to depression. He was more like the joke we've seen where the person is so taken by themselves that you see them primping as they stare into a mirror, admiring themselves.
Thirdly, we need to also recognize that while we most likely do make ourselves into a false god at times, we have also set up other false gods to run to as needed. We need to take a look at those thoughts and emotions that we take captive and see if any of them lead to a false god or two. If we suspect they do, then we need to hold them up to our view of God and see how they stand up to it. Is our view, our belief in God stronger then our false god? Or is our belief in the real God so low that we have no trouble hanging on to our false gods? If so, then we obviously need to work on making God more real to ourselves. (actually, that's not a bad idea even if we don't find any false gods) We do that through continued daily study of His Word with Him and just plain talking to Him about it and asking Him to help us make Him more real to ourselves. The more we do that, and the longer we've done it, the more our faith and trust in Him will grow. The more real He will be to us, and our lives will show that.
Lastly we have to remove the false gods from our lives and give that space back to the real God.
Other posts about this subject:
- The Civilized World’s Made Things Harder For
- Examples of Modern False Gods and Idols
- The times we're most likely to turn to an idol
- What are your false gods, your idols?
- I used to think that I couldn't ever be an Idolate...
- I used to think that I couldn't ever be an Idolate...
- From the heights of revelation to the valley of id...
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