IDOLS OF THE HEART (2)

Few of us admit to being idolaters. Indeed, the thought appals us. That’s because we generally associate idolatry with the intentional and outward worship of images.

At a deeper level, however, idolatry is something that doesn’t need to involve figures fashioned out of wood, silver or gold. It’s a matter of the heart, and in particular, the ruling passion of the heart. The heart is what determines how we live, and it’s in the heart that worship – either true or false – has it roots. Anything that takes the place that God requires in our hearts becomes a substitute, a competitor, and an idol.

As we noted last week, all of us are by nature idolaters. Be it the love of children or of cars, we are prone to have something other than the love of God controlling the way we live. And, as Ken Sande pointed out in the Sunday School class we attended, that invariably leads to a progression of actions on our part. Idols, we saw, typically make us desire, then demand, then judge, then finally punish when we can’t get what we hanker for. There are no exceptions – it happens all the time.

But must we remain in bondage? The good news of the gospel is that we don’t have to stay chained to our idols. God’s grace enables us to dethrone them and replace them with him. To do that, Ken Sande suggests we must do two things.

The first is that we must confess our sin, or own up to the fact that something has a grip on us that has taken the place God alone should have in our life. That’s not an easy thing to do, and we can be sure that we will meet with resistance when we attempt it. We will find ourselves struggling with denial, blame-shifting, minimizing and the like. But honest confession is the only thing that can break our bondage. We have to come to God and admit that we don’t love him as we ought to, and that something else has grabbed the love of our heart. We have to admit that we’ve been looking for satisfaction, fulfilment, identity and purpose in something other than him, and resolve that with his help, we will do so no longer.

Then secondly, we need to replace the worship of the idol with worship of the true God. “We are designed for worship,” Ken Sande said, “and we must always worship something.” That’s because we have an innate sense of being creatures, and dependent on something outside of ourselves. If we don’t recognize that ‘something’ is God and give him his due, we are bound to fix on something else and worship it.

To break free from our heart idols we have to worship God intentionally. We need to delight ourselves in the Lord, making him the chief desire of our hearts (Ps. 37:4). Whenever we fall prey to the power of idols – whether connected with power, possessions or pride – our focus is taken away from the Lord to other things. It needs to be refocused on him. We have to remind ourselves of his goodness and his unfailing faithfulness and love, and settle our hearts upon him.

Furthermore, Ken Sande reminded us, we need to rejoice in him. Praise and prayer and singing need to be part of our everyday life. When that’s true of us, our heart idols won’t get a look in.