Open Mouths

Hear me, my people, and I will warn you— if you would only listen to me, Israel! You shall have no foreign god among you; you shall not worship any god other than me.  I am the Lord your God, who brought you up out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it. (Psalm 81:8-10)

                Returning to the list of passages Dallas Willard provided about God’s provision, today we look at a major challenge for us. It’s easy to look at the last phrase, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.” We can get excited about that. Like baby birds, we can sit with our mouths open a lot. As Dallas Willard has pointed out, we have infinite desire. 
                The problem is that in our infinite desire, we tend to ignore the rest of the passage. We’re only too happy to open our mouths and have God fill them, but the part about having no foreign gods – or any gods other than God. That’s the hard part. We desire things, sometimes necessary things, to the point that they become gods. It’s not that we bow down to them, necessarily. It’s that we build our lives around them, thus, to the natural materialist (a common scientific belief system,) the cosmos is god. For some, nature is god. For others, the government is effectively god, though they would probably not put it that way. Other things that can be gods: food, money, power, family, romance (often called “love,”) position, fun, alcohol, anger, fear (or the object feared), revenge, sex, and self. 
             If we would seek to open our mouths and have God fill them, we have to get rid of these other gods, and that’s not an easy task. These other gods are often addictions, even if thy are not drugs. When I was researching my family tree, I explained to people that it’s like taking drugs. Every time you find something, “Eureka!” you get a little hit. It may only last a few seconds, but it’s a high. That means if you go where your family has lived for several generations, you can accumulate quite a few legal hits in any given day. And every once in a while, you come across something bigger. It’s addictive. The same can be said to most of these petty gods. They give one a sense of control, well-being, power, hope, fulfillment, fun, etc. 
                Another problem with these petty gods can be illustrated with a conversation I had with my brother more than once many years ago. He pointed out – accurately – that one can be just as  addicted to food (gluttony) as one can be to alcohol. The problem is that you can never drink another drop of alcohol in your life, and you won’t die from its lack. The glutton can’t give up eating for the rest of his/her life without physical harm and death. Food is a crueler god than alcohol. But if we want God to fill our mouths, we have to turn our mouths toward Him.