Deals with Assyrian Demons. (Isaiah 31)

"Run to Egypt to find strength!" Trusting the guys who used to enslave you to help you be free.
"Run to Babylon to get glory!" Run to the place that beats, robs, and kills you.
"Run to Assyria to know peace." How can a nation here today and gone tomorrow give anything, let alone peace, that is supposed to last forever?

It's easier to see the idols for what they are when we take a moment to ask a simple, though can be hard, question: "What if I'm wrong." Have we gotten to a place in our world that we are so full of pride that we cannot ask this question of ourselves to see how other's might be right. Listening for truth rather than to the echo chambers we have come to call church and the ideologies we have come to call god.
Can't serve two masters, you will come to hate one and love the other, love one and hate the other.
Can't serve self and GOD. We grow to love self and hate GOD (pride), Hate self and hate GOD (wrath), Hate on self and love GOD (bitterness) Love on self and Love GOD (Peace). Not self focused, self obsessed love. Other focused, Other centered love that streams forth from knowing Who HE IS and What HE has done and is doing in, through, and for us. Focused on GOD'S giving rather than our getting.

Recognizing, as C.S. Lewis put it, that all life is permeated with a basic sense of holiness. We didn't make it, how do we have right to claim it? HE Made and Makes it, should we not treat it as such? The loved work of The Beloved ARTIST, the first step, I've found, to learning to not hate one's self and stop letting and listening to the voices that say, "you're less than and nothing more."

The truth that gives the strength to point out the silly idol thinking and the fallen lies that keep us from see, hearing, and knowing, the Truth of HIS Love.