Some years back, a brother visited his pastor to seek counseling for a matter that’s been weighing on his soul for some time — he just couldn’t resist doing certain things that he knew displease the Lord. Without fail, he would go through this full range of the most self-pitying emotions and come lament to me just what a failure he was.
The pastor counseled him on numerous occasions, and peace would reign for a few weeks before the whining started again.
On one such occasion, the pastor of the church was away, so the pastor from a sister congregation stood in for him. When the brother was done with the counseling session, he was fuming, muttering over and over to himself just what a lousy pastor that man was.
Surprised that the counseling session only took five minutes instead of the normal hour, I asked him what happened.

Perhaps some of you are thinking that after starting the ball rolling on a rather loud debate on the prosperity gospel, judging, discernment, motives, etc, I’m really ’smart’ to keep away and just let things roll while not saying a word.
We often think of idols as graven images of humans or animals fashioned by machines or human hands and which people worship.

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