The following post is written by a short-term mission trip participant to Latin America.
I made my way up the outer staircase into a Russian style apartment complex and entered the home of a young woman. As I looked around her apartment, I was shocked by the state of her home furnishings.
Unlike the other homes I’d visited during my short-term trip to Latin America, there weren’t cracks in the wall. There was no plaster coming off of the bricks. Her walls were freshly painted and her floors were new. She even had a shiny refrigerator and a large flat screen television.
All of her stuff made me think, “I could live here.” This felt like America to me.
She didn’t have much time, but I got the opportunity to present the gospel. She quickly accepted and hurried off to pick up her child from school, and I spent the afternoon reflecting on my trip.
The first thing I wrestled with was how evident it was that our team was serving in a land of idols. I’d even met people who said, “My idols are all I need” as they rejected the gospel. The second thing I thought about was my meeting with the young woman and how the niceness of her home greatly contrasted with the rest of the ones I’d visited.
That is when the Lord confronted me with my own heart condition.
In that moment, I realized I had been on high alert for people with idols in their homes. Then God took me to this woman’s apartment to suddenly see all of my idols—the clean, spacious, new, sleek, big things that give me comfort outside of Christ.
I thought they were they were the ones struggling with idolatry, but God opened my eyes to realize, “Oh shoot, it’s me with the problem.”