Idols

For the past month or so, after watching a sermon about idols by Mark Driscoll, it’s been pretty obvious for me that I have idols I have in my life.  Of course, as Christians, we probably realize that there’s always something that we seem to put above God. 

I’m thankful that God has shown me what the idols may be, but getting them out is another matter.  I find that when I overcome one idol, another one suddenly comes.  It’ll definitely require a lot of discipline.

“Change won’t happen through ‘trying harder’ but only through encountering the radical grace of God.”
- Tim Keller

Pray that God would reveal Himself, and that I would continue to see Him as more precious than anything else.  That the problem of worshipping other things other than God would not seem appealing.

The Cross of Christ

“As to the object of your affections, in an especial manner, let it be the cross of Christ, which has exceeding efficacy towards the disappointment of the whole work of indwelling sin: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world” (Gal. 6:14). The cross of Christ he [Paul] gloried and rejoiced in; this his heart was set upon; and these were the effects of it—it crucified the world unto him, made it a dead and undesirable thing. The baits and pleasures of sin are taken all of them out of the world. . . . If the heart be filled with the cross of Christ, it casts death and undesirableness upon them all; it leaves no seeming beauty, no appearing pleasure or comeliness, in them. Again, says he, “It crucifies me to the world; makes my heart, my affections, my desires, dead unto any of these things.” It roots up corrupt lusts and affections, leaves no principle to go forth and make provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof. Labor, therefore, to fill your hearts with the cross of Christ . . . that there may be no room for sin.”

-John Owen, On Indwelling Sin in Believers