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You know how single people, when they have like a dog or a cat or something like that, they call them fur babies?
Well, apparently people that have fish, they keep fish, like in an aquarium, they call them fish babies.
Yeah, I found that out on a on a on a fish keeping message board. One of my sons got an aquarium for Christmas, a 29 -gallon freshwater aquarium, and got a few fish in there and everything's looking good, but I had a couple of issues, and so I went to a fish forum, and they call them fish babies.
If I had to find out, so did you. In any case, I wanted to, look, it's a new year.
It's a whole new me. No, no, I'm just kidding. It's, I'm not going soft on you, but I did want to just mention one thing that I've been thinking about this a lot.
Last year, I talked to my brother a lot about this, and it's just this idea, and actually, funny enough,
I met someone that's from my area that found me on YouTube. So Luke, hey, thanks for hanging out.
We talked a little bit about this as well, but this whole idea of like, everything's idolatry.
It's idolatrous, everything. You're the idolatry of the family, the idolatry of sports, the idolatry of this, that, everything's idolatry.
If you like something, then it's idolatry. It's like, I really, really think that's a very damaging,
I think that's an evil doctrine, I think. Everything's idolatry. Like, no, no, not everything's idolatry, you know?
And even if you like something a whole lot, and like, you know, maybe like you neglect your kids a little bit because you like it so much, like, that's bad, but I don't know if I'd call that idolatry necessarily.
It's, I don't know, maybe, maybe not, but I think what ends up, I'm not even really even talking about that, like neglecting your kids, that's evil.
I'm not going to play defense for someone like that, but just this idea that like, I don't know, it's like this mentality that you gotta be careful how much you care about something, otherwise you're an idolater.
And it's like, if you care about your family too much, you're an idolater. If you care about your country too much, you're definitely an idolater.
If you care about the city a lot, that's good, you can do that, but you can't care about the United States that much, you can't care about your football team that much, you can't care about sports, you can't care about anything.
You can't have hobbies even. I've heard people that if you have a hobby that you like dedicate too much time into, you better be careful because that's idolatry.
It's like, no, I mean, if I really want to get good at fishing, like that's not necessarily me worshipping fishing.
I just, I don't know, where does this idea come from? It's like you can't care about anything, and that's not true.
I mean, God wants us to be, He wants us to be happy. He wants us to enjoy
His creation. And in fact, even just saying what I just said, God wants you to be happy, like that's going to give certain people hives, like God doesn't care if you're happy or not.
Where does this come from? I think God is very clear that He wants us to enjoy
His creation and the things that He created, and He created things in such a way that this is obvious even outside of the
Bible, like the way He created the world, right? And of course, we don't want to go outside the Bible, we don't need to know this, but even if you didn't have the
Bible, I guess is what I should say, the way He's created the world, it's obvious God wants us to enjoy it, you know what
I mean? And I've said this before, like He gives you food to give you energy to do the things that you need to do.
He didn't have to do that, but then He does give us food, and not only does He give us food, He gives us delicious food, and you can create combinations of food, and create new flavors, and new textures, and new everything, and even if you're poor, you can create delicious foods.
In fact, if you look at delicious cuisines, so often they're like peasant dishes, because peasants didn't have the best foods available, so they had to get creative, and new techniques for cooking, and making it taste good were found in peasant communities, right?
Like God is so kind to us, like He didn't have to give us anything, but He does, and then He gives us this medium to create all kinds of delicious, pleasurable foods, and things like that.
And then of course, you know, thinking about, you know, be fruitful and multiply, right? He could have just said that, and He could have made it awful to be fruitful and multiply, but no,
He gives us a method of being fruitful and multiplying that's very enjoyable, and pleasurable, and things like that.
He could have just given us offspring that, you know, was, you know, not cute in any way, not adorable, didn't say funny things, you know, and no,
He didn't do that. He gave us little children that are just adorable. They say the funniest things. I made a smoothie this morning, and my son said, you're making a smoothie with just leaves, and it's like, it was just funny, and you know, nice little things.
God didn't have to, but even if you just looked at the way He created the world, of course God wants you to enjoy yourself, and He wants to give you good things.
Somebody before the holidays talked about how, like, some people, like, say that it's bad to enjoy the gift -giving of the holiday season too much.
Like, that's the idolatry of gift -giving, you know? And it's like, no, I mean, you should give good gifts.
There's nothing wrong with enjoying gift -giving, and receiving gifts, and giving gifts, and all of these things.
This is all good things, you know? God gives good gifts to us, and He is happy about it.
He's happy to give us good gifts, and so we should, in turn, give good gifts to our children, and you know, that's why
I got my kid the aquarium, and things like that. And there's nothing, like, I've just, it's hard to point to an exact teaching where someone's teaching this, although there is some of this in fundamentalist circles, in some fundamentalist circles,
I should say. But there is definitely, like, a directional teaching that's just, like, it's kind of just the air we breathe.
Like, if you're enjoying something too much, that's when you know you're in idolatry, or at least you should be suspicious that you're in idolatry.
And I just don't get it, you know? This is Psalm 37, 4, and I've heard a lot of preaching on Psalm 37, 4, and I feel like a lot of people just try to make every excuse for it not to say what it says.
And I don't get that impulse, you know what I mean? We just got to take God at his word, and here's what it says, and this is a new year, new me, you know?
I'm not getting soft on you, but this is a coffee mug verse, so all the pictures I could find of it were pretty soft.
It says, take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Now, obviously, he's not going to give you evil desires, right?
So, if you have evil desires, he's not going to give you that. That goes without saying.
But we don't have to over spiritualize this. We don't have to make this like, to put on our nerd hat and make this mean that he doesn't really care for our happiness.
He doesn't really care for us. He doesn't really care if we have the things that we want and all of that. I just don't see the need to do that.
That's not how David wrote these psalms, you know what I mean? Like, you can understand this. This is not something that you need a degree in theology to understand.
Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
God wants you to enjoy life. It's okay to enjoy things. You go to Gospel Coalition, and it's just like, everything is just muted, and they don't want you to get too excited.
In fact, if you get too excited, that's when they start to worry you might be an idolater. Unless, of course, it's the city you're getting excited about, or some kind of progressive politics, climate change, or something like that.
Then get as uppity as you want. But if it's like traditional things, you know, like your family, your wife, your children, sports, art, whatever it is, music.
It's okay to enjoy that stuff, guys. It is. God wants you to enjoy his creation.
He wants you to get out there in nature and enjoy a hike just for the sake of the hike.
That's okay. He created all this stuff. He created those beautiful vistas and those trees that you see in the mountains.
He created it, and he didn't have to make it as beautiful as he did, but he did.
He made it beautiful. You can enjoy that, and you can just get charged up by enjoying that.
That's okay. It's okay to get charged up to figure out how to get better at fishing, or to figure out how to create your homestead, or something like that.
Or figure out how to have a big family, and everyone to enjoy each other's company, and to love them, and to want to provide them a good life and comfortable lives.
It's okay to do that and to say, you know, God, that's what I desire, Lord. I'm going to take delight in you.
I'm going to obey you, and I'm going to ask for those things. It's almost like we're at the point where we're almost like we're so beaten down, man.
We're so beaten down in the United States, and we're beaten down by our own government. We're beaten down by propaganda, but I feel like sometimes we're beaten down by regime
Christianity as well, where it's like if we ask for too many things from God, it's like, well,
God's not really going to honor that. God's not there to give you what you want, and it's like,
I mean, okay. I understand. God's not in my debt, or is it the other way?
I'm not in his debt. I forget which one it is, but he doesn't owe me anything is my point, right? He doesn't owe me anything, but he seems to indicate in the scripture that he wants to give you the things that you want.
If you want health, you want, you know, a good life and all these kind of things, health and wealth, that's like a dirty word in so many reformed circles.
That's the health and wealth gospel. It's like, well, obviously, I understand that's not how, where I get my salvation.
That's not what salvation is, but if I want health, and I want wealth, and I want those things, it's okay to ask
God for that. It's okay to ask God for that, and if he chooses to give them to you, and if he chooses to give you a little bit, or a lot, or a small amount, or things like that,
I mean, that's up to him. That's his prerogative. We're going to have joy in whatever we get from God, you know, because we're taking delight in God, and we're asking him to give us the desires of our heart, because that's what his scripture says, and there's nothing wrong with that.
There's nothing wrong with praying and having that kind of a longing, that kind of an expectation.
I want a family, you know. There's so many people out there that can't find a wife, right? And, you know, they're praying for a wife, and I know,
I know, I've talked to people like this, where they feel bad praying to God, like, in a desperate prayer,
Lord, give me a wife, send me a girl, send me a woman, and they've been made to feel bad.
Like, what is this, the prosperity gospel? I've even heard that, where it's like, if you're a homosexual, and you're praying to God, God, please take these desires away from me, you know, send me a wife, something like that.
You've been made to feel that that's prosperity gospel. You believe the prosperity gospel, if you ask for that too much.
I'm here to tell you, it's okay to care about things. It's okay to care about the health of your nation. It's okay to care about the health of your church, your family, your community, your relationships.
It's okay to care about those things. It just sounds stupid. This sounds like a stupid topic, right?
But it isn't a stupid topic, because in our culture, we've been beaten down so much, that it's almost, we feel bad for asking.
Like, we're not trusting God enough, if we just continue to come to Him, and ask Him again, and again, and again, send me a wife, send me a wife, please send me a wife.
I've talked to people like this, guys. I know these people are out there, and they're made to feel bad about that.
You might be an idolater, if you keep asking for God, for a wife. And that's not what the scripture said. Take delight in the
Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Be like the persistent widow.
Ask Him again, and again, and trust Him in the asking. It's like we get to the point where it's like,
God is good, but He's not good in any discernible way. That's what we have to believe.
We have to believe that. He's not good in any discernible way. He's good. We just have to trust Him, that He's good, even though nothing
He does is good. Again, you can't point to a specific teaching of someone saying that, because everyone knows if they come out and say that, then they can't.
No one's going to buy that, because it goes against the scriptures, right? But they put this subtle pressure on you, that everything is idolatry.
If you care too much, if you ask too much, if you're sad when you don't get the desires of your heart, if you're sad because God hasn't sent you a wife yet, it's your problem that you're sad.
You shouldn't be sad. You don't trust God. It's hard to even put into words exactly how this teaching comes across, but it does.
It just does. Not everything is idolatry, guys. It's okay to care about things.
It's okay to ask the Lord for the desires of your heart all the time, as many times as you need to, as many times as you want to.
You're going to trust God either way. We all get it. We all get it. Sometimes we don't get the things we ask God for. We trust
Him either way, but we can hold on to these verses, guys. We can hold on. God wants you to enjoy your life.
God wants you to enjoy your life, and He loves you, and He wants to take care of you. He wants to give you good gifts, the same way that I want to give my sons good gifts.
So, I'm just giving you permission here in 2023. It's okay to care about things. When things aren't going well, it's okay to feel sad about that.
It's okay to ask God to change your circumstances. These are all okay. It's not prosperity gospel to ask
God for that kind of stuff. Obviously, it isn't. In any case, I hope you found this video helpful.