Tear down the golden calves.

I had said before in many devotionals that when I was learning the Ten Commandments as a young girl in Sunday School, I immediately perceived that having no other gods before the Lord was only a problem for the Old Testament church, which still built golden idols of worship to foreign gods. At some point, I thought, "Well, if there are any areas I don't struggle in, the whole idol thing is one!” But how wrong I was!

We build many idols in our lives. Now, we don’t call them idols, to be clear, but they are idols nonetheless. Idolatry is extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone. Essentially, it is putting anything or anyone ahead of our love and admiration for our Heavenly Father. I don't know about you, but I have been guilty of putting many things before my Lord and Savior in the past. I have worshiped my children when I didn't realize it. There are the idols of social media, power, fame, money, marital status, worldly possessions. I know many who are far more concerned about what car they arrive at church in than what happens when they get inside the building.

Anything that we allow before the Lord is an idol. Just because we don't have a golden calf displayed in our living rooms does not mean we don't have golden calves in our lives. We must take inventory of our lives and begin to tear down all worship and idols built in our hearts. Ask the Lord to search your heart. Have you given time, effort, and energy to a person, place, or thing more than you have to Him? Have you worshiped football, sports figures, singers, or pastors? Have you put someone in an undue position, placed upon a pedestal? Or does your loyalty lay with God alone?

How do you know you have created an idol in your life? Well, there’s a few easy ways to tell:

1. If you are easily offended when someone mentions that that person or thing may be an idol...it could be an idol!
2. If you would find it hard to let go of anything in your home that the Lord said to remove...it could be an idol!
3. If you refuse to turn off a particular song or television program, even when the Holy Spirit gives you a gut check, it could be an idol.

The list is long of ways to identify if you have an idol in your life. Simply put. If you have a strong reaction to the removal of anything or anyone in your life – at the prompting of the Lord Jesus – you may have an idol. (To be clear, loving our children and family members is, of course, honoring before the Lord. But the Lord did ask Abraham to sacrifice his son in Genesis 22 - even though we know the story ended differently. Likewise, Jesus said in Luke 12:51-53 that He came to divide, including in families. The point is, anything we aren't willing to lay down before the Lord is an idol).

Points to Ponder:

• What is God doing to transform you right now? How do you know?
• Would you say your prayer life consists of constantly asking the Lord to reveal and lay idols down?