personal development on Idols

Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

All: “The idols of the nations are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear, nor is there any breat...

All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands, which initia...

An idol is anything or anyone that receives my primary focus of both my energy and my resources, which should first of all, belong to God.

Andrew Carnegie rose to become among the world's richest individuals through his steel empire. In the midst of this acquisition of massive wealth at just thirty-three years old—Carnegie conducted ...

“Casey at the Bat” has got to be the most well-known sports poem in American history. The “Mudville nine” are down four to two, with one inning left with two outs. Two men wait at second and third bas...

Dear Lord, we come to You this morning first to give You our worship and praise. You are the King, You are the Lord, You are the one who did indeed create us and give us life. You never leave us. You ...

Failure is a gift. When we are forced to drink the dust of our idols, we can begin to turn our sights toward home.

Dear Lord, we worship You as our God and King, as the One true God, as the faithful Guardian of our souls. We come to You in this time of worship to stop, to breathe, and to listen. We want to open ou...

Pastor: “Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD; I will not be angry forever. All: Only acknowledge your guilt. Admit that...

O God, you judge your people with righteousness; we judge our neighbors either right or wrong. Your Servant defended the cause of the poor; it is because of our greed that many still want. You bring d...

One has only the choice between God and idolatry. There is no other possibility. For the faculty of worship is in us, and it is either directed somewhere into this world, or into another.

O God, you are indeed worthy of our praise and worship. Yet we turn away and worship other gods. We find ourselves at the altar of our careers, our financial security, our self-image, our status. We t...

Almighty God, You created us in your image, each of us in your likeness. Help us to worship You alone, Lord, and never bow to any created thing. We see your handiwork in every one of your works, b...

A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our...

Sin isn’t only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever...

I lust after recognition, I am desperate to win all the little merit badges and trinkets of my profession, and I am of less real use in this world than any good cleaning lady.

Dear God, Sometimes fear is an idol that we believe will help us control our lives. Sometimes fear is a companion that we let take the place of You. Sometimes fear is the enemy that tells us You are n...

“Whom the gods wish to destroy,” Cyril Connolly famously said, “they first call promising.” Twenty-five hundred years before that, the elegiac poet Theognis wrote to his friend, “The first thing, Kurn...

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.

I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.

Please forgive us, O Lord, for we often forget how powerful you are. You are the potentate of time, yet we think we rule our lives. We are sorry for creating images of you that are smaller than realit...

Calling is where our talents and burdens collide. Our talents are our birthright gifts, the gifts that make our hearts sing, come alive. Our burdens are found in our stories, in what breaks our hearts...

Distraction, at least the dangerous kind I’m referring to, is shifting our attention from something of greater importance to something of lesser importance. Our fundamental and most dangerous problem ...

We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

Worship is a meeting at the centre so that our lives are centered in God and not lived eccentrically. We worship so that we live in response to and from this centre, the living God. Failure to worship...

Beauty awakens the soul to act.

We do not content ourselves with the life we have in ourselves; we desire to live an imaginary life in the minds of others, and for this purpose we endeavor to shine.

A vision we give to others of who and what they could become has power when it echoes what the spirit has already spoken into their souls.

I take a page from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and I define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God. Instead of telling them they are sinning b...