Bible Reading: 1 John 5:16-21
Do you spend hours at the mall or flipping through magazines admiring the latest fashions? Do you use all of your free time studying the statistics of your favorite sports
team? Do you invest all of your energy trying to create the perfect snack or playing a favorite game?
These activities and many others like them are harmless and enjoyable if they are used to enhance your life. However, if you are so immersed in any activity to the point that you don’t have time pray, help others or do the work God has for you to do, or if you are too tired to go to church or have daily devotions, those activities have become idols.
1 John 5:21 says, “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.” An idol isn’t just a dusty, old statue. An idol can be any thing or any activity that distracts you from God or takes God’s rightful place in your life. Any idol is any thing or any activity that takes the energy that you should use to worship and serve God.
Do the things you own and the activities you do enhance your life or do they control your life?
“Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5
Prayer: Heavenly Father, I want you to be the only God in my life. Help me to clean out all of the “everyday idols” from my life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
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