Last week something crazy happened, and it broke my heart and robbed me of my dream and what I have longed for over all these years.
At the risk of sounding silly and even foolish, I want to be real and share what has been going on in my heart. But first, let me add some context and so I can set up the heartbreaking plot twist that I just experienced. This blog is kind of embarrassing for me to write, however I just want to be real and communicated something powerful that happened to me last week that has already changed my perspective drastically.
I’m not sure when and where this all started, however, the thought of having a wife “one day” had become an idol without me even noticing it. It was right in front of my nose the whole time, but I just had lost my sense of smell.
First let’s look at what an idol is. An idol = anything other than God that we put our hope in, put above Him in any capacity. (There are many different ways to articulate this, but you get the point).
Now if having a wife was central on my heart and mind all the time I would have realized it and known it was an idol, then being able to expose it, ask for forgiveness, and surrender it to Jesus. (Most of the time surrendering things are not as simple as a ‘one and done’, this would have probably been a daily surrendering for quite some time).
Heart Flashback:
Ever since I was 16 I knew I wanted to serve Jesus for the rest of my life in whatever way that brought Him the most glory. At first I thought I wanted to be a pastor, then youth pastor, then missionary, then speaker and etc… Although that has changed over and over, I have learned that I just want to say ‘Yes’ to Jesus and obey Him to the best of my ability at whatever He has called me to do. I have always fueled off of excitement and I think that my passion is a gift from the Lord. I get so passionate and fired up about Jesus when I truly seek Him with my whole heart, that nothing really scares me. This is not arrogant this is just Biblical because “perfect love casts out fear“. But over the years I’ve had to be careful that my passion and hopes do not lose focus or it can cause a lot of sin and chaos in my life. And subtly but surely the idea of a ‘wife’ became something tucked away in the back of my mind. Unbeknownst to me, in my early 20’s I was starting to hope for and get passionate about the idea of a wife.
Now some of you might be thinking, ‘wow hoping and praying for a wife is a good thing, let’s not make this over spiritual’. But please just wait and continue reading.
Over the past 8 years I really began to pray and hope for the “perfect wife for me”. “Jesus please send me a beautiful wife who is in love with you, etc… ” I heard different sermons on praying for a future spouse before you meet them and I did just that. But I grew into a pattern of slowly putting more and more of my hopes into this idea and really this “prayer”. And at one point I really felt as if the Lord spoke to me through someone else (I still do) and promised me a wife and a family. So how was praying for a wife, hoping for a ministry partner, and clinging to God’s promises wrong? How is it an idol to hope for something good that the Lord purposes and provides?
I’ll tell you how, it became something I hoped for that gave me strength. It became this fantasy of, “although times are tough now, keep grinding and one day you will meet this awesome girl the Lord provides and you will have so much joy, love, and passion that it will just take you to the next level Ethan”.
It became a weekend type of mentality. If anyone has every worked a normal job where you have the weekends off, you might often find yourself longing for the weekend when the week is stressful and seems to be unending. Although it might not be an overwhelming longing, you still look forward to the weekend to kind of motivate you to finish what your doing during the week. In this same way, I think the idea of a wife became my “weekend” mentality that I have been looking forward to.
Practical examples of my thought processes:
“Although ministry is tough now”, “although I feel like my quiet times are dry now”, “although I can’t really hear the Lord’s voice now”, “although I have no direction on what is next in life now”, “although the people I’m around are really aggravating me today”, “although I feel as if I’m sharing the Gospel and no one is really listening or taking it seriously”, etc… HOWEVER; one day I’ll meet “HER” (and the Holy Spirit will fall from heaven and we will get married on cloud 9), and my passion in ministry will be renewed. My passion in seeking the Lord will be renewed. My passion for a fresh vision of what’s next will be renewed. Because I’ll have my wife with me and we will be pursuing Jesus together.
This might be hard to make a clear contrast that is obviously exposable to just the casual reader, but if you really try to stand in my shoes for a second I hope this all can make sense. I have had clear idols in the past, but this was something that was disguised as a Godly thing. But the whole time, God clearly just wanted my heart… ALL OF IT! God wants me to be willing to say “Yes Jesus, Here am I send me”! When did Jesus and a future wife become my hope? I want to boldly say “Jesus, You and You alone are enough, no better yet, more than ENOUGH!”
Although this could potentially be a “duh, Ethan I knew a wife was an idol in your life” kind of moment in the story. Let me just extend this so it can be applicable as a heart check to all who read. In hopes that we would be able to search the Lord with our whole heart, is there anything stealing part of our heart? Is there anything we say “man, once this happens everything will get better”, or “once I’m retired, then things will slow down so I can make time for Jesus”, “once I have a kid..”, “once my kid gets out of the house”… “once I get a new job, or promotion”… The point I am making is that what are we eagerly looking forward to in the future? It’s not a sin to be excited about things. But where is our hope? Where is our joy? When things are tough, mundane, or even going well, is there anything we set our heart’s gaze on other than Him? Jesus says in John 10:10- “I come so that you may have life, and have it abundantly”. Jesus has abundant life for us now! In the mundane times, in the good times, and especially in the tough times. However, are we going to set our whole hearts’ on Him and Him alone or are we going to allow an idol to rob us of our joy, our dreams, and our time.
Psalms 37:9– “But now, Lord, what do I look for? my hope is in you”
Now that this has been exposed in my heart as an idol, I have been able to repent of it and seek the Lord on a deeper level once again. He has daily been changing my heart, resetting my hopes, rewiring my thinking, and renewing my dreams/aspirations and fire for Him. God crushed my dreams of a future wife, so that He could place in me bigger dreams. Dreams that involve my whole heart, not just half of it.
