This Will Make You Question What You Thought You Knew About Idolatry

Hello beloved child of God, I hope you’re fine by God’s grace. As for me, I’m okay thanks to Him.
Today we’re going to talk about Idolatry but before we get there, I just need to let you know that this blog post is not to belittle you or shame you. Instead, it’s here to help us understand better the driving force behind some of our actions, so that we can submit these areas of our lives to God for guidance and restoration. We all struggle with Idolatry, just that we don’t always notice it, but God can deliver us in Christ Jesus.
When I was still a child, I used to watch cartoons in which idols were shown as objects (usually having a face and or a body-figurines) made of wood, iron, gold, or bronze, which were placed in a temple or in a house and people would go to these objects when they needed reassurance, or guidance, or whenever they needed something. They would bow down before these objects and run to them when they needed anything.
As such, when my mother would teach me about the Ten Commandments and God’s commands to have no other god than Him, I understood that these gods were objects which we didn’t have to bow down to.
Deuteronomy 5:6‭-‬10 NIV

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

This brought me to question part of the culture of my previous church since there was a lot of bowing down before figurines and praying to them. If you’re in a church which asks you to do something contrary to God’s Word and to worship a figurine/an image/an object this is a red flag and a sign that you should quit.
Nevertheless, being able to recognize that bowing before an image/an object/ a figurine and praying to it was idolatry made me think that I was now idolatry-proof and that it was impossible for me to fall in idolatry again. I was wrong.
I was wrong because I was yet to discover that idolatry can be more tricky and more subtle than having an object to bow down to. I was yet to discover that the decisions that I made could tell who I was following, God or an idol.
I came up with a few questions which should help you discern with the help of The Holy Spirit if and where there are idols in your life.

1. Where Do You Run To?

When times are hard, when you’ve had a difficult day, when you feel frustrated and unloved where do you run to?

• Do you run to God in prayer or do you take another glass of alcohol, or another huge amount of food?
• When you feel lonely at night, do you open your Bible to find comfort or do you go to your phone/computer for pornographic videos?
• Do you run to God for help, or do you try to find peace and relaxation in drugs, casual sex, masturbation, self-harm etc. ?

Where you run to when you face a major stressing issue in life says a lot about if you’re having idols in your life.

2. Who or What Have You Replaced God With?

God is supposed to be your Source, God is supposed to be at the center of your life. Who or what is at the center of your life now which has replaced God? I love the way the MSG translation puts these verses.
Hosea 4:11‭-‬14, 15-19 MSG

“Wine and whiskey leave My people in a stupor. They ask questions of a dead tree, expect answers from a sturdy walking stick. Drunk on sex, they can’t find their way home. They’ve replaced their God with their genitals. They worship on the tops of mountains, make a picnic out of religion. Under the oaks and elms on the hills they stretch out and take it easy. Before you know it, your daughters are whores and the wives of your sons are sleeping around. But I’m not going after your whoring daughters or the adulterous wives of your sons. It’s the men who pick up the whores that I’m after, the men who worship at the holy whorehouses— a stupid people, ruined by whores!“You’ve ruined your own life, Israel— but don’t drag Judah down with you! Don’t go to the sex shrine at Gilgal, don’t go to that sin city Bethel, Don’t go around saying ‘ God bless you’ and not mean it, taking God’s name in vain. Israel is stubborn as a mule. How can God lead him like a lamb to open pasture? Ephraim is addicted to idols. Let him go. When the beer runs out, it’s sex, sex, and more sex. Bold and sordid debauchery— how they love it! The whirlwind has them in its clutches. Their sex-worship leaves them finally impotent.”

The people of Israel were not following God, they had replaced Him with their idols, and you can see from this text that their idols weren’t only carved images, they also had alcohol and their genitals (sex/sexual pleasure) which were their idols.
It says “They’ve replaced their God with their genitals” which means that the driving force in their decisions wasn’t God, but sexual pleasure.
You may have replaced God with something different from sexual pleasure, or alcohol. In your case it may be food, or it may be money, or it may even be a person, a relationship, an activity, a phone which you’ve used to replace God in your life.
This really takes discernment from The Holy Spirit to see where our idols are. In fact, our addictions usually show where our idols are, and we need The Holy Spirit to open our eyes about it.

3. Who or What Do You Put Your Trust In?

In other words, where does your confidence lie?
Psalm 118:8‭-‬9 NIV

It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in humans. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.

Jeremiah 17:5‭-‬8 NIV

This is what the Lord says: “Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord . That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives. “But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord , whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

• Someone who hates to forgive and who prefers to revenge shows clearly that they DO NOT Trust God when He says that He is a just of judge and that He is going to avenge us.
• Someone who steals shows that they don’t trust God to provide for their basic needs though He promised in His Word that He would provide
• A single person who burns with sexual desires but who doesn’t trust God may jump into illicit sex because they think God will never provide a Godly spouse for them and a holy context for sex (i.e marriage)
• Someone who takes drugs or alcohol to relieve stress just reveals their deeper belief that according to them God alone and His promises can’t relieve their stress

Your decisions say a lot about who you put your trust in. An idol is Anything or anybody in which/whom you put your trust instead of putting your trust in God.

The Roots Of Idolatry

I think that no body who wants to serve God really wants to have idols, but at times we find ourselves having idols without even knowing why and how it happened. I believe idolatry has two roots.

1. Ignorance/Lack of Knowledge

HOSEA 4:6 AMP

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge [of My law, where I reveal My will]. Because you [the priestly nation] have rejected knowledge, I will also reject you from being My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children.

If the people of Israel really had knowledge, they would know that God who created them is enough. It’s the same thing for us today who are struggling with idols without even knowing it. If we had knowledge we would know that God is enough.

• We would know that we don’t have to steal because God will provide
• We don’t need to kill others because God will avenge us
• We don’t have to gratify our sexual desires with sinful practices because those are God-given desires and in His time He will provide a holy context (marriage) for them to be gratified and even if He doesn’t, His grace will be enough for us to walk in absence of sexual gratification
• We would know that we don’t need drugs or alcohol to feel entertained and relaxed, we can come to pray and worship and we will feel busy and relaxed
• We would know that we don’t need a new boy friend or girl friend to be happy, that Jesus Christ is already out best friend
• We would know that we don’t need all the money on Earth to enjoy life because God already gives us abundant Life in Christ Jesus

If we run to idols, put our trust in them and replace God with them, it’s not always because we sat down one day and decided to rebel against God, it’s often because we don’t know who God really is for us, and I’m not talking about intellectual knowledge.
Some of us can recite all the Bible verses about God being our provider but we never believe in our hearts that He can provide specifically for us.
Here we’re talking about REVELATION KNOWLEDGE. Revelation knowledge doesn’t come when you’ve just read the verse or memorised it. It comes when The Holy Spirit reveals to your spirit that this verse is true for you too and applies to your life.
Till The Holy Spirit reveals to you that God is YOUR Good Father, you will keep singing songs about God being A Good Father, but you’ll never believe that He is YOUR Good Father.
When we don’t know who God is supposed to be for us, we look for ways to find what we need, but we wouldn’t look elsewhere if we already had Revelation knowledge that God has it all and He is enough for all our needs.

2. Unbelief

The second cause of idolatry is similar to the first one. We may know because we read in The Bible that God will provide for us, but if we don’t believe this then we’ll never apply it.

• If you don’t believe that God can bless the work of your hands instead of working you may prefer stealing and being lazy because you don’t even believe that God can bless what you do
• If you don’t believe that God is a Healer and that He can deliver you from addiction to drugs you will never try quiting because you don’t even believe that God can do something for you, so you continue in your idolatry of drugs
• If you don’t believe that you can feel complete without having sex with whores and that God only can complete you, then you’ll keep going after whores because you think that having sex with many people can complete you
• If you don’t believe that God loves you, you’ll run from abusive relationship to abusive relationship because you want to be loved

Behind idolatry there is always a basic need (love, joy, peace, entertainment, food, thirst, sex, shelter, provision, companionship etc.) but if we don’t have revelation knowledge that God is able to provide for us and give us exactly what we need in His time and in His way, if we don’t believe in His promises for us in His Word, we will look for “other solutions” which will never satisfy us, and before we realize it, we will have run into multiple sins starting with idolatry.
When we don’t believe God, we are being unfaithful to Him.
Faithfulness bears two words in it; Faith (taking God at His Word) and fullness (completely).
Do you want to be faithful to God? Take Him at His Word completely.

The Remedy To Idolatry

HEBREWS 11:1‭, ‬6 AMP

Now faith is the assurance (title deed, confirmation) of things hoped for (divinely guaranteed), and the evidence of things not seen [the conviction of their reality–faith comprehends as fact what cannot be experienced by the physical senses]. But without faith it is impossible to [walk with God and] please Him, for whoever comes [near] to God must [necessarily] believe that God exists and that He rewards those who [earnestly and diligently] seek Him.

Faith is taking God at His Word.
If we sincerely believe God and choose to walk by faith and to stand tall on each promise He made, every time we will be tempted to satisfy a need, we will remember that it is only in Him and through Him that we will be satisfied. We just have to run to Him and trust Him.

A practical way to fight idolatry everyday through faith

1. Ask The Holy Spirit to show you the idols in your life and write them down on a piece of paper or in a book
2. Take down one idol at a time. For each Idol identify the basic need behind your Idolatry
3. Now that you know the basic need behind your Idolatry search your Bible and write down every promise of God in which He said He was going to meet that need
4. Ask God to heal your unbelief and to help you believe in these promises
5. Keep these promises with you everywhere you go to, so that each time you’ll experience again that need and you’ll be tempted to go after that idol again and to meet your need all by yourself without God,you will remember that you can trust Him and Him alone.

Prayer

Holy Spirit of God, I surrender to You with my open heart, search me, open my eyes so that I may see where I have idols, reveal to me who God is supposed to be for me (my Source, my Healer, my Hope, etc.), reveal to me that I don’t need idols and that God is enough, heal my unbelief, in Jesus Christ’s Name. Amen.

It’s Now Your Turn

What are your deepest needs right now and how can we pray for you? Which idols have you been running to instead of running to God. Please let us know in the comments section.
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Invitation

Are you fighting a battle in your mind against the lies of the devil, past failures, anxiety, depression, comparison and jealousy, you need to learn how to tap from God’s Word to receive the necessary resources to win this battle. I recommend that you check out this new series by Pastor Steven Furtick, lead Pastor of Elevation Church. This series started on 11-12/08/2018, it is a 7 parts series through which you’re going to learn how to take back your mind in the age of anxiety.
All you need to do is tune in on the Youtube channel of Elevation Church every Sunday at any of the following times.

• 14:30 (GMT+1) a.k.a 9:30 am EST
• 16:30 (GMT+1) a.k.a 11:30 am EST
• 22:00 (GMT+1) a.k.a 17:00 EST

If you feel concerned about your internet connection, watching the whole worship experience with video quality 240 MP should cost you 250 MegaBites. Alternatively, you can download the sermon replay on YouTube on Monday evening at 17:00 GMT+1 (12 Noon EST)
God loves you so much
God bless you
Victoria Eyog