There can be no doubt that this possessive clinging to things is one of the most harmful habits in life. Because it is so natural it is rarely recognized for the evil that it is; but its outworkings are tragic— A.W. Tozer

Main Texts:

Exodus 20:3-5 (NIV)
3″You shall have no other gods before me. ” 4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God… ”

Mark 12:29-31 (NIV)
29″The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”

Pertinent Questions:

1. What exactly are idols?
Idols are anything that defiles our worship or rival with our love for God. Even brothers and sisters in Christ whom we love and praise more than God Himself can be our clandestine idols.

2. Ways to test whom are our idols.
Who do we muse over more than God Himself?
Who do we desire to spend time with more than with God Himself?
Who do we desire to know more than God Himself?
Who do we boast about more than God Himself?
Who do we depend on more than God Himself?
Who seems to give us more security than God Himself?
Who seems to give us more satisfaction and happiness than God Himself?
Who do we submit to more than to God Himself?
Whose approval do we seek more than God’s?

3. How should we love brothers and sisters in Christ apart from guarding each other’s sexual purity?
We should love brothers and sisters in Christ by struggling to neither be idols to them nor make idols of them. For to truly love each other is to uphold one another to obey the first greatest commandment: to love the Lord our God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind and with all our strength. To distract one another from worship, devotion or service to the Lord is what we must abstain from doing. We should love one another by guarding each other’s purity of heart for the Lord.

4. What are the sins that need to be battled in any Christian relationship?
Lust, covetousness, idolatry, and an ungodly obsession to possess.

The Prayer:
Father, I want to know Thee, but my coward heart fears to give up its toys. I cannot part with them without inward bleeding, and I do not try to hide from Thee the terror of the parting. I come trembling, but I do come. Please root from my heart all Those things which I have cherished so long and which have become a very part of my living self, so that Thou mayest enter and dwell there without a rival. Then shalt Thou make the place of Thy feet glorious. Then shall my heart have no need of the sun to shine in it, for Thyself wilt be the light of it, and there shall be no night there. In Jesus’ name, Amen.— A.W. Tozer