That’s a little scary.

Everyone tells us to pursue our dreams, but no one tells us to make sure we keep God first while pursuing them.

I’ve only been blogging for a little over a year this time around, but it didn’t take long to see how easy it would be to make writing an idol.

Living the American Dream

If you’re pursuing a goal, you know what I mean. It’s easy to become consumed by it.

And while the goal itself might be wonderful–a way to love God and others–it still has the potential to mess us up. If we’re not careful, it will lead us away from God.

God has convicted me that this is something I need to work on in my own life once again, so I thought I might as well blog about it! Future posts will deal with how to break free from idolatry. But before we can break free, we need to know what our idols are.

I’ve been talking about the idolatry of a goal, but there are a million different potential idols out there: recreation, exercise, work, the Internet, relationships, approval of others, excitement, television, food, and avoiding conflict, just to name a few.

Here are a few questions to help you determine whether or not you have any idols:

Do You Have an Idol? – Quiz

1. What do you feel like you have to have to be happy?

2. What do you think about in the middle of the night or when you first wake up in the morning?

3. What do you spend a lot of time on each day?

4.  What do you worry about?

5. What would you have a hard time giving up for a month?

6. What do you do when you’re depressed or stressed out?

7. What do you do to avoid doing the things you don’t want to do?

8.  In what areas of your life, do you experience your greatest struggles?

9. Where do your feelings of self worth come from?

10. What do you escape to when you’re having a hard time in life?

11. What do people tell you that you spend too much time on?

12. What do you hide from others?

13. What do you talk about too much?

14. What could you not live without?

When you finish answering the questions, glance back over your answers. Do you see anything popping up more than once on the list? The more often you see it on your list, the more likely it’s an idol.

If you’d like to work on getting rid of that idol, join me for future blog posts.

Note: This blog post was inspired by Deb’s post at Counting My Blessing. I’m looking forward to reading her future posts on this subject!

Image courtesy of think4photop at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Question: Do you think idolatry is prevalent in the church today? Does your church provide much instruction on how to break free from it?