I think the worst thing a Christian can do is do the right thing for the wrong reason. It seems like if you do the right thing, you should always get a good result, but that is not the case. What is more important than what you do is why you do it. God does not tally up all the good things we do and reward us for our effort; he looks at our heart. God judges the motive behind every action we take and makes sure that bad motives do not produce good results.

I married my ex-husband for two reasons: 1) I was pregnant, and 2) I had no means of supporting myself. I had only been a Christian for a few months. I was still recovering from being abducted and raped by a serial rapist the year before and had overdosed on sleeping pills, so my emotional state was unstable.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had completely cut God out of the picture. There was no repentance or asking for forgiveness, just a desperate attempt to fix things and conceal my wrong doing. I thought I was doing the right thing and would be rewarded for my effort, but I had no interest in being married to the father of my child; I just wanted him to take care of us.

It says in Judges 18:30 that the children of Dan worshipped a graven image or false god until the day of their captivity. The word translated captivity, gâlûwth (gaw – looth´) is derived from the Hebrew word gâlâh (gaw – law’) which means “to leave, depart, uncover, reveal” (1540).

The day of my captivity was the day my ex-husband left me for another woman. At that point, I had no one else to rely on but God. I wish I had turned to God sooner, but unfortunately, like the Israelites, I was a stiff-necked, stubborn woman and thought I could take care of my own problems.

“And they set up Micah’s graven image, which he made, all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh” (Judges 18:31). My guess is that Laish, where Micah’s idol was kept, and the house of God in Shiloh were not that far apart in distance. It was probably not for convenience that the Danites wanted to worship at home rather than going to the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle was where you went to acknowledge your sin, and like me, the children of Dan wanted to keep that a secret.