February 10, 2016
If you have worked in a situation where two people were considered your boss, you might have felt trapped between loyalties. It was not intended by your superiors, but it happened because two people trying to accomplish a task were not communicating. Hopefully, both of the bosses were asking for good things – just different.
There is another situation where two bosses are trying to influence us differently. Actually, one of them is the real Boss and the other is a counterfeit who tries to influence us as though he is in charge. Jesus said: “No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24).
When we commit our life to Christ, we give Him all that we are. We release ownership to Him. He becomes our Manager – our perfect Boss. He always has what is best for us in mind. He understands the best use of who we are. When He is allowed to have complete control, He always accomplishes what was intended and we are sure to have joy.
There is another force called the “counterfeit god.” We know him as Satan or the Devil. He has a lot of power and influence, and his primary goal is to keep us from letting God be our Boss. He offers seemingly attractive options that hide destructive consequences. In the statement of Jesus quoted earlier, Satan is referred to as “money,” but he comes to us with a variety of temporal offers. Anything less than complete allegiance to God is part of the worship that Satan wants.
Ways to handle this problem include: (1) Identifying the false god – whatever is taking our attention off of Jesus; (2) deciding to choose obedience to God over Satan’s lies; (3) removing thoughts or attractions that could take us into idolatry; and (4) mentally and verbally announcing that Jesus is our one and only God.
Jesus is the perfect Boss, so why would we take the time to see what the false one has to offer? We already know it is less than best.
Pastor Bill Ehmann