You must not have any other god but me. Exodus 20:3
I used to think an idol was nothing more than a statue on a pedestal. It would be silly to ask a little figurine to do anything for me, so I didn’t give them much thought. But idols take on many forms. They’re not just a physical thing you put on a stand to worship. As a matter of fact, an idol doesn’t need a statue at all to become something that we devote our time, attention, and affection to.
How we spend our time shows what we value the most because it’s the only commodity we can’t replace. Once it’s spent, there’s no getting it back. What are we giving our most precious asset to? Whether it’s watching the news, working out, following social media, eating right, or eating badly, even simple things can cross the line from being good things, to becoming idols. All it takes is that we give them first-love status, make them our primary affection.
When you’ve had a bad day and run to something other than the Redeemer to be made whole again, you run to an idol. When you invest your time with a person, food, work, drugs, exercise, entertainment, fill-in-the-blank, instead of with God, you’ve created an idol. When we place our hope, our confidence, our longing, in anything other than God, we’ve created an idol. If we’re living for ourselves, we’ve created an idol, an idol called ME.
God knows how we are made – He designed us for relationships, connection with others, love. And He knows that when we love, our hearts get tied up to our beloved. That’s why Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters” (Matthew 6:24). We can give God first-love status, or we can give that place to something or someone else. Whatever we value as more important than God becomes an idol.
Is there anything holding you back from knowing God intimately? How about from having the desire to know Him more? Is there a space in your life where you don’t want God to come any closer? We may start off saying, “This is very important to me.” But if we don’t want God to have any part of it, we’re also saying, “This is more important to me than God.” And when that happens, we’ve given our hearts away to another love. How can we fully experience God’s love and intimacy if we have another lover?
Idols are powerless. However, when we create and worship them, it produces a vacuum in our hearts that will be filled with something other than God’s goodness and His Holy Spirit. This vacuum creates a place for sin to grow and eventually infiltrate our whole lives.
Like any lover, God wants to be our first desire. And because He loves us, He desires for us to be fulfilled, blessed, complete, whole. He really does want good things for us, life-giving things. If we truly want to live, we have to get rid of those things that we turn to to fulfill our desires instead of Him. Nothing else will satisfy us.
When you open your hand, you satisfy the hunger and thirst of every living thing. The LORD is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness. The LORD is close to all who call on him, yes, to all who call on him in truth. He grants the desires of those who fear him; he hears their cries for help and rescues them. Psalm 145:16-19
God holds His hand out to you, and He invites you to take it. To know Him inside and out. To walk through the woods with Him, watch the sunset with Him, listen to the ocean waves crashing on the shore. These are all signs God loves you intimately and He desires good for you. He offers fruit that will nourish and satisfy your every desire, that will fill you with life itself.