Idols Lead Us Away from Christ

Dear Judah and my future grandchildren,

If we seek our meaning in ourselves, we will crush ourselves with no power to remake.

If we seek our meaning in others, they will crush us with no power to remake.

If we seek our meaning in Christ, He will crush us but by His power He will remake us.

An idol is something that you value more than God.  As you can probably guess, that means that anything that God created can become an idol in your life.  This is true.  It’s what John Calvin was getting at when he called our hearts ‘idol factories’.  The longer I’ve walked with Jesus the more I see that I have surrounded myself with many many idols: food, comfort, family, alone time, rest, friendships, money, and many many many other things.  Don’t misread what I’m saying.  Those things are good but when they become more important than God, they become an idol.  It’s at that point they become destructive.

They are destructive when they are more important than God because God designed every human to have their source of life (blessing, joy, power, peace and all other good things) as God himself.  Through that God gives us all those good things.  Seen and experienced from that perspective they are good things.  Those things should prompt us to see God’s goodness and our response should be a thankful and worshipful heart to God.  Yet I know that daily my heart doesn’t do that, thus proving that I have made an idol out of those things in my life.

And in an irony that is only irony from the world’s perspective, when we let go of those things and give them to God, He allows us to experience them with a much greater joy because they are fulfilling their purpose of pointing us to Christ.

So it is in that perspective I urge  you to pray that God would show you His goodness in everything in life, big and small, good and bad, easy and difficult.  With that mindset you will be driven to love and trust God in every situation.  God will start to build in you a fortress of Christ identity that will withstand the siege of the world wanting you to put your identity in it.

Always, always, always seek your identity in Christ, nothing more.

Never forget that,

Grandpa