While traditional idol worship still occurs in many places, internal idol worship - within the heart - is universal.
RedeemerNYC Twitter
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Tim Keller's Counterfeit Gods
In his book Counterfeit Gods, Tim Keller writes:
What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living. An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought. It can be family and children, or career and making money, or achievement and critical acclaim, or saving “face” and social standing. It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable circumstances, your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even success in the Christian ministry. When your meaning in life is to fix someone else’s life, we may call it “codependency” but it is really idolatry. An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, “If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.”
What are those things, or who are those people, that you depend on more than Jesus to provide the meaning and purpose and security and significance you long for? In other words, what are your idols? Experiencing God’s deep rescue begins with identifying what idols you worship.
From On Earth as it is in Heaven
What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give. A counterfeit god is anything so central and essential to your life that, should you lose it, your life would feel hardly worth living. An idol has such a controlling position in your heart that you can spend most of your passion and energy, your emotional and financial resources, on it without a second thought. It can be family and children, or career and making money, or achievement and critical acclaim, or saving “face” and social standing. It can be a romantic relationship, peer approval, competence and skill, secure and comfortable circumstances, your beauty or your brains, a great political or social cause, your morality and virtue, or even success in the Christian ministry. When your meaning in life is to fix someone else’s life, we may call it “codependency” but it is really idolatry. An idol is whatever you look at and say, in your heart of hearts, “If I have that, then I’ll feel my life has meaning, then I’ll know I have value, then I’ll feel significant and secure.”
What are those things, or who are those people, that you depend on more than Jesus to provide the meaning and purpose and security and significance you long for? In other words, what are your idols? Experiencing God’s deep rescue begins with identifying what idols you worship.
From On Earth as it is in Heaven
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
From Piper's Twitter
Love: "The steady directing of the human will toward the eternal well-being of another" Stephen Neill. (Note "eternal")
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
