Hostage Situation

If you go to the Old Testament, specifically the book of Judges, you watch God's people, the Israelites, repeatedly turn from God. In fact, the whole pattern of that book is this.

Israel is following God. Israel turns from God. God judges Israel. Israel is taken hostage by one of their surrounding countries. Israel repents. A judge shows up and leads them. Israel is following God, and the cycle starts again!

I don't know about you, but when I look at this, I tend to find myself laughing at Israel a little bit. God has done so much for them, but they keep turning away from Him. They turn away from God to worthless idols over and over and over and over again.

It's easy to think about how dumb they are for doing that. However, don't we do the same thing?

Every day, we fight a continual battle to keep God as the highest priority in our lives. We can replace Him with money. Making our paychecks the biggest priority in our life. We can replace Him with status, giving everything that we have to get that next promotion. We can replace God with virtually anything.

I think that this is because God has designed our hearts to worship. God has created us in such a way that our hearts are easily captivated.

God's intention in this is for us to be entirely consumed with Him, but we so quickly get lost amidst the cares of this world. The words of Jesus ring true, "seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you."

It's not bad to make money, or have nice things. It isn't bad to get promoted, but when those things take precedence over our relationship with God, they become idols, and they make us hostages. If God isn't the one thing captivating us, everything else will be out of sync.

The question remains, how do we keep God on the throne of our hearts? How do we keep ourselves captivated by Christ?

The answer to this is rather simple in understanding, but more difficult in application.
The way that we keep our hearts captivated by Jesus is by spending time with Him. We need to invest in our relationship with our Creator.

A car won't run properly if it doesn't have gasoline, oil, or coolant in it. It needs to be filled up properly if you want it to be used properly.

Our hearts work the same way. Not that we should put gasoline into them, but if they aren't being fueled, they won't operate in the way that they have been intended to.

Where we invest our time and energy most will show what our hearts are being captivated by.

If you continually invest in your walk with Christ, your heart will continually be captivated by Him.