Whenever reading stories in the bible of people who turned from God to worship false idols, I always thought of them as ignorant and completely out of their mind.
I would ask myself, how can someone know the goodness and wholesomeness of God and then ignore him to worship a completely false god?
But then it hit me, we still do that today.
About a month ago I started reading this book called "gods at war" by Kyle Idleman. I haven't gotten too far into it but thus far, he's made some shockingly valid points.
Whenever we choose to devote ourselves to something instead of God, that is idolatry.
When you choose a relationship with someone over your relationship with God and you fuel your fellowship with them more than you fuel your fellowship with God, you are idolizing that person.
Before we delve any deeper, let's define what "idolatry" is.
Idolatry (noun) - excessive or blind adoration, reverence, devotion, etc; Obsession, madness, mania.
When someone idolizes something, they are chasing that thing with "excessive or blind adoration". The definition speaks for itself; an idol is something that we obsess over, think about constantly, and allow to dictate our decisions. There's a reason that idolatry is so clandestine, it's fun, exciting, and it disguises itself as a goal that we have set out to accomplish.
In gods at war (Student edition, page 23) Kyle Idleman makes a point that seems really obvious, but is very potent once you grasp it:
"Anything at all can become an idol once it becomes a substitute for God in our lives"
Substitute (n.) - a person or thing acting or serving in place of another
A real life example in my life is this:
{ About six months ago I worked at a bakery. It was fun at first, but working every Sunday for 12 hours can really affect a person. My relationship with God was fine at first, but the more and more that I missed church, my connection with him (and my church family) began to exhaust itself and become inexistent.
I didn't really care, to be honest, because I was receiving joy in money and relationships with my coworkers. But as I worked more and more all I was really doing was building idols in my life.
I would work Friday, Saturday and Sunday and would average about 36-40 hours in those three days. Not only was I incredibly tired, but my school work was suffering, my relationship with my family was suffering and whatever I got out of my job was never enough.
I had become obsessed with work, despite the fact that I didn't have a passion for making a massive amount of cookies, packaging baked goods, and cleaning really heavy machines.
If you like Lord of the Rings, this will resonate with you very nicely; my job had become precious to me, I didn't want to give it up, nor did I see any reason to. It was my ring, it was my idol, every decision I made was for the betterment and progress of keeping my job; but unbeknownst to me, it was suffocating me and taking my life force. }
When we chase after the perfect job, the perfect body, the perfect relationship or the perfect wardrobe, we are in fact, letting that thing have mastery over our lives. They have become the master that we answer to, the lord that we worship and give most of our focus to.
1 Corinthians 6:12 (NIV) "'Everything is permissible for me' - but not everything is beneficial. 'Everything is permissible for me' - but I will not be mastered by anything."
Our free will allows us to do whatever we wish with our lives, we think "I can quit chasing this thing whenever I want" but we can't prove it because it's something that we don't think is a problem in our life. So we go through our entire life worshiping hobbies, and people, and food and countless other things. We never take a second to stop giving attention to those things because they appear just as necessities or as small practices that relieve tension in our lives.
What things in your life do you give your prime devotion to?
If you have read all the way down to this point, you are obviously pretty invested in what I have to say, so pull out some paper, grab a pen that you like, and jot down the first five things that you can think of that you give your full attention to; things that you spend your resources on (ie. food, friends, family, hobbies).
Reflect on these things, do you allow these things to take precedence before God?
Do you sacrifice reading your bible, spending time praying to God and talking to God to do those things?
I'm not going to tell you what to do, I just want to help you realize this, as you soon as you bow to these things before you bow to God in your life, your relationship with Him will suffer.
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