Idols

I began a bible study on January, 1, 2007 from the book, Idols of the Heart, by Elyse Fitzpatrick, which can be bought here.

In Exodus 20:3, God commands us to have no other god's before Him. What comes to your mind when you hear the word idols? In the Introduction, Elyse has this to say about our view of what we believe idols to be:

"Idols are something outside of us; they're something foreign, something you take pictures of in far-off temples, something you wonder at."

Previously, what came to my mind were things like statues, those things that pagans bowed down to. As Elyse said, something that was outside of myself. Though it's true that those things are idols, idolatry goes beyond that. An idol is anything that we love more than we do God Himself, something that we say, like Rachel did in Genesis 30:1-3, "Give me children, or I shall die!" After examining my own heart, I do see idols that dwell there, things that I believe I have to have in order to make my life complete. In believing that, I err because my life is complete because of Jesus. I read this in Charles Spurgeon's Morning and Evening devotional this morning:

"All you need to make you blessed, to be supremely blessed, is to be with Christ."

We are commanded in Matthew 22:37 to love the Lord with all of our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our mind. This is a good verse to meditate on today, to ask ourselves what are we putting above the Lord? What is it that we feel we have to have in order to make our lives complete?

In reality, what we believe we must have in order to make our lives complete, or to be happy, is the opposite of what actually will make our lives happy, or complete. When we have been saved by the grace of God, through Jesus Christ, our lives are complete, because He is our life. And when our sins have been forgiven, and we are saved from the wrath of God, we can rejoice.