Is Jesus Your Lord Or Your Idol?

I was listening to Matt Chandler (The Village Church, Dallas, TX) this morning on the way into work as he continues his Colossians series - "If You Are Raised With Christ" which is part 11 of the series. He preached this message on 5/23/2010 (here is a link to the series).

Loved it when he said, paraphrasing, "If Jesus is not your goal, but what you can get from Jesus - then you are an idolater." So good. Very often we believe God is going to do this or that, or give us this or that, when God never made any such claims. His only claim is that He is God. We treat Him as some giant ATM machine in the sky, or some cosmic genie. We need to make sure that He is our goal and not what we can gain from Him (and we gain plenty by the way through knowing Him - just not always what we want.) Does God delight in giving us the desires of our hearts? Absolutely. Are our desires always what He wants for us? No. The joyful Christian is one whose desires are directly correlated to a true and personal relationship with God - come what may.