I heard something in a sermon recently that made me think.
The most important decision we make in our lives is how we answer the question – who is your god?
Who is our god? Is our god sports, family, TV, or education? Is our god the identity we have created for ourselves? At the end of 1 John, the Apostle says guard yourselves from idols. For me, the concept of idols started with statues that we bow down to but as God opened my eyes I saw that is was much more. An idol is any thing that I place above Him and one of the things I placed above Him was family. It sounds silly to me now but it was what I worshiped. I placed the ideal family above God and almost everything else in my life. God had to tear that idol down to begin to give me a new life in Him.
1 John 5:21 – Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Other idols I know I struggle with include self-reliance, loneliness, and knowledge. As I find idols in my life, God begins to tear them down and these specific idols are in various stages of being destroyed in my life. I am sure there will be many more idols found.
The human heart is an idol factory. –John Calvin