Who Is Your MVP?

If you follow sports at all and even if you don’t but perhaps enjoyed the 2012 Olympics, you will have heard of the term MVP – Most Valuable Player. I’ve often wondered how the powers that be make such decisions. Do they have a checklist of criteria?  or is it based on their gut about which player gave the best of the best to most benefit the team? Often times the choice for MVP agrees with my choice but not always. MOST VALUABLE—what does that mean to you?

Weren’t the Olympics amazing this year? I felt such a sense of positivity and joy throughout. Courage and hopefulness. And perhaps in each of your hearts one or two of the athletes stood out as your own MVP of the Games. I would be torn if someone asked me who was the MOST Valuable 2012 Olympian? MOST means only one! And, in my mind there were many more than just one who stood out as Valuable: Gabby Douglas, Michael Phelps, Oscar Pistorius, the beach volleyball queens- Misty and Kerri. But you may have a favorite depending on your own person criteria or favorite sport. So who’s to say? Who’s rules should we go by?

And, what if we tweak that acronym just a little bit and say MVP could mean Most Valued Person; and if you change the acronym to MVO it could mean Most Valued Object. Right now if someone were to ask of me, ‘what person in your life do you most value?’ or ‘what possession do you own that means more to you than any other that you have?’  Wow! Those could be a very tough questions to answer! How can I answer who my Most Valued Person would be when I have two daughters and three grandchildren and my blessed, almost 98-year old father? And my prized possession? A precious note from a first grader that I’ve kept for over 30 years? My home? A beloved gift from a dear friend? My Bible?

What is most valued? Who is most valued? In my next series on ARISE I want to explore that idea. What does God’s truth say about what is most valued? What does God seek for us and our relationship to Him in regards to what is MOST valued?

It’s all about the word IDOLATRY.

What? Idolatry? Wasn’t that when everyone lived in tents or caves and served ancient kings or carried around with them little icons to comfort them? Or perhaps it’s tribesmen with their talismen and statue worship in the deep dark places of the Amazon. Idolatry? Not in 2012!! Not in my city! Not in my home! If you think that such ideas are of the past, I hope to convince you that idolatry is alive and well in our world today. Perhaps much, much more than in the days of our ancient ancestors.

What is an idol? According to Merriam Webster online an idol is:

1. an image or other material object representing a deity to which religious worship is addressed. 2. any person or thing regarded with blind admiration, adoration, or devotion. 3. an image or semblance of something, visible but without substance, as a phantom. 4. a figment of the mind; fantasy. 5. a false conception or notion; fallacy.

And…what does God say to us about idols?

“You must not have any other gods except me. You must not make for yourselves an idol that looks like anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the water below the land.” Exodus 20:3-4 NCV

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” 1 John 5:21 NIV

“An idol is nothing but a tree chopped down, then shaped by a woodsman’s ax. They trim it with tinsel and balls, use hammer and nails to keep it upright. It’s like a scarecrow in a cabbage patch—can’t talk! Dead wood that has to be carried—can’t walk! Don’t be impressed by such stuff. It’s useless for either good or evil.”  Jeremiah 10:3-5 Message

“You can be sure that using people or religion or things just for what you can get out of them—the usual variations on idolatry—will get you nowhere, and certainly nowhere near the kingdom of Christ, the kingdom of God.” Ephesians 5:5 Message

“Do not turn to idols or make metal gods for yourselves. I am the Lord your God.” Leviticus 19:4 NIV 

“Don’t turn away and worship statues of gods. They are useless. They can’t do you any good. They can’t save you either. They are completely useless.” I Samuel 12:21 NIRV

“Their land is full of idols; they bow down to the work of their hands, to what their fingers have made.” Isaiah 2:8 NIV

“The rest of the human race, all those who had not been killed by these plagues, did not turn away from what they themselves had made. They did not stop worshiping demons, nor the idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see, hear, or walk.” Revelation 9:20 GNT

There’s lots, lots, lots more. In fact, the concept of idolatry is a MAJOR topic in the Bible. If you don’t accept God as Almighty and the Creator this conversation won’t mean much to you except as a curiosity. But if you love Him, you probably want to know what He wants you to know when He talks about you and me having idols.

So why on earth does our Creator care about this? I asked myself,  ‘”Have I placed other things higher than Him?”

Why does it matter? Hard questions, harder answers. Join me on the journey.