American Idol (factory)

Put your seat belts on.

This ride might get a bit rough.

Let's begin with a bumpy comment.

The kind of word that will eject you from your car seat.

-------

Your heart is an idol factory.

It churns them out faster than a hefty guy at the Golden Corral buffet line grabbing at the fatty spare ribs.

I know that you don't think of yourself as an idolater. And I know that when I say the word "idol" you are thinking of Golden Calves and the TV show which churns out preppy-one-hit-wonder's.

But the reality is people worship everything from what money can buy. What it can't. Heck we even worship the green back's themselves.

Before we move on, we need to answer a question, "What is an idol?"

"It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give." If anything in all the world is more fundamental than God to your happiness, to your meaning in life, then that thing has become an idol. It has supplanted God in your heart and in your affections. You will pursue that thing with an abandon and intensity that should be reserved for God alone."

Why do we love idols?

You and I love the 3 dimensional world.

The things that we can see, feel and touch.

 But what if there was more to life than those things?

What if the reason you are not satisfied in this life is directly connected to not understanding and appreciating the things that remain invisible to the human eye?

Faith, Love, Hope.  

All invisible.

All flowing from a heart that knows God.

Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church, writes the following about Idols:

"The human heart takes good things like a successful career, love, material possessions, even family, and turns them into ultimate things. Our hearts deify them as the center of our lives, because, we think, they can give us significance and security, safety and fulfillment, if we attain them." Thus anything can be an idol and, really, everything has been an idol to one person or another. The great deception of idols is we are prone to think that idols are only bad things. But evil is far more subtle than this. "We think that idols are bad things, but that is almost never the case. The greater the good, the more likely we are to expect that it can satisfy our deepest needs and hopes.  Anything can serve as a counterfeit god, especially the very best things in life."

 

Friend, let me ask you --how is it with your soul?

The answer to that question directly hinges upon if you filled your life with the things of eternal value.  Honestly, idols make a bad friend, they are a terrible goal and idols have a nasty habit of leaving you reeling ...

Do me a favor. Take a second and look at your watch because it's time.

Time to do yourself a favor and stop the idol worship. Give yourself and your heart to God in 2013. 
It is the best resolution you will make all year.