My beloved, flee from idolatry (1 Corinthians 10:14).
Idols have a way of disappointing those who trust them. Because only God is God, everyone and anything that we put before God will fail us. Nothing and no one is as strong and faithful and good as God.
If your idol is being the best mother, it only takes one embarrassing moment with your kid in public — or one other mom being praised in front of you — to tip you from happiness to misery.
The grace of God in Jesus Christ frees us from finding our identity in what we can accomplish.
If your idol is people-pleasing, it just takes one person not complimenting you to send you into a day’s worth of doldrums, wondering if that person likes you.
If your idol is being at the top of your class, it just takes one bad grade to ruin your whole semester and undermine your sense of self-worth.
A great question for discerning the idols of your heart is this: what makes you overwhelmingly joyful? Or — the opposite — what can make you miserable, or angry, or frustrated even if everything else is going well in your life?
Thankfully, the grace of God in Jesus Christ frees us from setting up idols and finding our self-worth or identity in what we can accomplish or who we can impress.
I am now free to love others for their own sake, for their own good, through Christ.
If I am acceptable to God only because of what Jesus did for me on the cross — yes it is humbling, but it is also completely liberating. I can free idolatry because nothing is as strong, and faithful, and good as God is for me in Jesus.
I am now free to love others for their own sake, for their own good, through Christ; because I am no longer using others as a means to bolster my own self-worth, or as fuel for the fire of my insatiable insecurities.