Journey into Light

I never thought of myself as an idol worshipper. “I don’t fall down in front of a golden calf. I don’t have some statue sitting on my shelf that I pray to.”

But when I went to seminary nine years ago, I found out that I was trusting in a number of idols. One of those idols was what people thought of me. To a great extent my self- esteem depended on being well thought of by others. If they did not respect me, I had a hard time respecting myself.

Another idol I discovered was achievement. I needed to attain certain honors and successes to regard myself as important. If I didn’t, I felt the pain of  being unimportant.

But God doesn’t want us to live this way!

How Do We Live?

He wants us to know that we are always important, loved, and accepted by him, all of the time. He does not want us chasing after the idols of what others think of us, achievements, and power to earn what he has already given to us.

When we rely too much on our reputation, comfort, health, pleasure or good circumstances, we can make idols of them. We can desire them more than God’s will for our life. God says to us, “Seek first [My] kingdom and [My] righteousness, and all these things will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33).

When we pursue achievement or power, we can be relying more on them than God’s gift of worth to us. A few years ago I had to make a difficult decision that cost me considerable achievement and power in order to follow God’s will. Now, I regularly thank the Lord for sparing me a great deal of grief by following him. If I had stayed in the situation, I would have been miserable.

Our basic problem is that God has made us to depend on him, and we don’t want to. So, we fill this vacuum with idols that don’t satisfy.

God asks us, “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:2).

How Do We Get Rid of Idols?

How do we shed our idols and embrace the true and living God?

One of the first steps we can take is to become aware that we have idols. Many of our idols are hidden from us. For example, I didn’t know that an influential man in my life was a father figure to me and I was projecting father issues on him.

I didn’t realize that I had made this man an idol by depending on him to get my need for worth met. When I realized what I was doing, I was able to transfer my dependence off the man onto God to feel important.

Because our false dependencies are often hidden from us, we need to rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal them. He is in the business of revealing our idols (Psalm 139:23-24).

We also need to know who we are in God’s eyes and “love the approval of God rather than the approval of man” (John 12:43, paraphrased).

It does us no good to know that God considers us precious for just being who we are, if we live our daily lives striving to earn our worth. We show in our striving that we really don’t believe that we are worth that much. We are hooked on the idol of impressing people.

A final thought is that it is impossible to be freed from our idols on our own. We can’t escape our dependencies on achievement, pleasures, what people think and good circumstances- unless we rely on God.

God says to us, “I have freed you of your idols when Jesus died on the cross. Now, depend on Me, and I make this freedom your experience” (Romans 6:6, paraphrased).