Identifying your Idols

During the months of October and November we are holding a discipleship course called 'Gospel in Life'. It is a course created by Tim Keller (Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Manhattan). the course is designed to help you understand how the gospel is lived out in all of life - first your heart, then in your community and then into the world. I really have been very excited by the course and Keller, is really resonating with the group.

Last night we discussed 'Idols'. Some of the conclusions from the study were interesting. We discovered that an idol was something that we make in our image and not in the image of God. Whether we are sacrificing to a statue or seeking to merit heaven through conscientious morality, you are setting up something besides God as your ultimate hope, and it will enslave you.

But we also discovered how though the evening how to displace our idols that we have established in our lives. I particularly liked this qupte from Thomas Chalmers,

It is seldom that any of our bad habits or flaws are made to disappear
by mere process of natural extinction. At least, it is very seldom that this is
done through instrumentality of reasoning...[or by] the mere force of mental
determination. But what cannot be thus destroyed may be dispossessed - and one
taste may be made to give way to another, and to lose its power entirely as the
reigning affection of the mind ...The heart's desire for having some one object
or other, this is unconquerable...The only way to dispossess the heart
heart of an old affection is by the expulsive power of a new one...It is...when
admitted into the number of God's children, through the faith that is in Jesus
Christ, that the spirit of adoption is pured upon us - it is then that the
heart, brought under the mastery of one great and predominant affection, is
delievered from the tyranny of its former desires, and is the only way in which
delieverance is possible.

To help you identify your idols here is some advice from Archbishop William Temple, "Your religion is what you do with your solitude." Now ponder these questions from Keller, "When you are alone what do you to think about the most? Where do your thoughts go naturally, instinctively and habitually?"