Recognizing Counterfeit Loves with Jen Oshman
Today Hunter and Lauren are chatting with Jen Oshman about loving God versus loving the world. Jen is a wife, a mom to four daughters, a former missionary, a writer, and a church-planting wife. Her passion is leading women into a deeper faith and fostering a biblical worldview, and she writes about that at www.jenoshman.com and in her two books: Enough About Me (Crossway) and Cultural Counterfeits (forthcoming March 2022, Crossway). We pray this conversation serves to lift your eyes from worthless things and set them on our good Father, who is worthy of all of our worship and affection!
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
What are some competing loves that we face as Christian women?
What about when the competing desires you’re holding are good things? How do we rightly order our loves under our love for God?
What is idolatry?
What does idolatry have to do with our identity, or misplaced identity?
How does God use his people and the church to help us to turn away from our idols and to look again to Christ?
Can you talk about maintaining right expectations in regard to our experience within the church? How can we have an accurate understanding of what we can do for one another in light of the realities of life on this side of eternity?
What is God’s heart toward us in our idolatry and prodigal ways?
How does the grace of the gospel meet us when we find ourselves loving earthly things more than we ought?
How does the gospel change us? How should it compel us to release our idols?
What Scriptures can we look to as encouragement to love God supremely?
How does letting go of idols and loving God bring about true freedom?
How do our misplaced longings show us our need for our increased ultimate longing for God?
NOTEWORTHY QUOTES
“Idolatry is (using Tim Keller’s definition) when I think ‘If I have that, then I will feel my life has meaning. Then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.’”
“We have to bring even good desires before the Lord and say “your will be done”
“Idolatry is when you expect a counterfeit to deliver what only God can.”
“[Idolatry is] whenever we trade in communion with the Lord for something else—for a counterfeit—and expect that thing to deliver. And it could be something good like marriage or motherhood, or it could be something a little more nebulous like money, wealth, security, or a nice appearance. Whenever we expect a counterfeit to deliver what only the Creator can.”
“Who you are is Whose you are.”
“We can only know ourselves if we know our Creator.”
“If I’m placing my identity in a counterfeit, then I’m going to be unsatisfied; it’s going to lead to my demise.”
“In order to know our identity, we have to know him who made us… So we turn to the Word of God, we spend time with the people of God, we ask the Spirit of God to help us. To know ourselves is to know our Creator first. We have to be rooted in that identity of children made in the image of God and as women who are redeemed by him and saved by him for his glory.”
“[Even when I don’t want to go to church] without fail, the Lord meets me on Sunday morning in witnessing the presence of other believers who are worshipping...just seeing that scene lifts my eyes off of my earthly landscape and helps me to seek the things that are above.”
“It is possible to make the church an idol, or to make ministry or missions or even family an idol.”
“Our hope and our salvation and our future hope for future glory—all that must be in Christ himself.”
“When we come to that place, when we come to the end of ourselves—maybe we call it burnout or just being brokenhearted—that is a gift. It feels terrible, but it’s such a gift to be confronted with our own idolatry or wrong thinking. It’s the grace of the Lord to reveal that to us so that we can ask him to help us change course and return our allegiance to him where it belongs.”
“When our hearts wander, when we want the good gifts rather than the Giver, he is watching you and me while we're a long way off and he runs toward us and takes the shame upon himself. He’s so merciful and so kind and we don't have to cower or be in fear, but we can praise him and thank him for the compassion and kindness and the feast that he's throwing us to welcome us home. He’s such a good Dad.”
“Jesus has reconciled us to the Father—even though we were his enemies, even though we were dead in our trespasses, even while we were yet sinning and opposed to he Father—Jesus laid down his life that we might be reconciled to the Father.”
“A counterfeit invites you to the table, chews you up, and spits you out. A counterfeit will use you and will never satisfy you, but our Father does.”
“Why am I spending myself on something that will not satisfy me the way the Lord will?”
“That is where abundant life is found—when we lay ours down and are hidden in Christ Jesus.”
“Our flesh and our culture preach a false gospel to us all day long. We are being discipled by Instagram and social media and our own flesh telling us all day long to come over here, to do this, to taste this, to try this bread that’s not actually bread, to labor for that which does not satisfy. So just to return to the Word and to return in prayer and ask the Lord, ‘Remind me that the fullness of life is at your right hand, remind me that abundant life is found in you Jesus.’”
“The more we become like Jesus, the more the Spirit renews us from the inside out and we look more like our Father in heaven and his Son who saved us, the costlier it is because we will have to lay down things, lay down allegiances and desires, we will have to lay down the approval of so many people…”
“If I keep going after that thing, if my allegiance is to Jesus, and if I am going to walk with him in the ways he is calling me, then I can’t have that so I need to lay it down and put it at the foot of the cross.”
“The Lord made us for not this lifetime, but the next...this is the pre-life for the real life that is coming.”
“This life is so brief and these afflictions are so temporary, but we’re waiting for eternal glory and that is coming. So let us remember that, let us run the race marked out for us because this life is so brief and the next one is eternal.”
“I was made for home; I was made for the feast; I was made to have communion with the Father and with all my siblings. And that is coming. There is a taste now; it's a shadow of what’s to come, and it is good. But there is more coming and we were made for that, so it's okay and good to long for that and fix our eyes on Jesus who is the author and perfecter of our faith and keep running that race that’s marked out for us.”
“Borrow the faith of your friend. When you don’t know up from down, go to a trusted sister who you know loves the Lord and ask her to recite the truth to you, to hold your arms up, to help you keep running and putting one foot in front of the other.”
“We are not infinite, we are not meant to be all-powerful, and so we need each other.”
BOOKS FROM JEN
Cultural Counterfeits (forthcoming March 2022)
SCRIPTURE REFERENCES
SIMPLE JOYS
Waking early and having time with the Lord and his Word
Saturday mornings with my teenage girls
The beauty of Colorado
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What are some things that compete for your affections?
How has God used his people and the church to help you to turn away from your idols and to look again to Christ?
How does understanding God’s heart to you even in your idolatry increase your love for him?
What Scriptures encourage you to love God above all other things? Consider memorizing those verses.
What might you do or change based on what you learned in this week’s episode?
IMPORTANT NOTE
Journeywomen interviews are intended to serve as a springboard for continued study in the context of your local church. While we carefully select guests each week, interviews do not imply Journeywomen's endorsement of all writings and positions of the interviewee or any other resources mentioned.
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