What Do You Worship? Idols Exposed

In John 7:37-39, Jesus calls people to believe and worship him. What is so sweet is that he does this after a week long party of eating and drinking the best food and wine. After all of this, most people would be satisfied right? Wrong! Jesus knows that created things can only give temporary joy and satisfaction. So, he stands up at the end of the party and says, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink." Jesus is promising that he is the way, the truth , and the life (John 14:6). He is the single way to eternal joy, joy that starts the minute you trust him for your righteousness and payment for sins. Joy that sustains you through suffering.

The first commandment, and most important in the Bible, is God calling his people to worship him and him alone (Exodus 20:3; Matt 22:37). In the very next verse (Exodus 20:4), God calls his people to not make any carved images or idols in his place. You see, this is the condition of the human heart, we run to created things for temporary joy instead of running to the Creator who holds all things together (Colossians 1:15-20). As John Calvin said, "Man's nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols (Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.11.8)."

The question is, whether we are Christians or not, what is it that we truly worship? What is it that our hearts truly desire? Christians will often say God because it's the "right answer," but God searches the heart of man and knows what we truly desire (Psalm 139:23-24). God woos us and draws us to himself (John 6:44), so we should be aware and fighting to love us him as he has loved us (Rom. 5:8).

Lastly, idols are often good things we have turned to for our ultimate joy instead of God. They are gifts from God meant to draw us to him for thankfulness, for the Giver is always better than the gift. These idols can be spouses, our kids, or our jobs. Deeper down they can also be our image, our self-righteousness, etc.

Below are a series of questions from David Powlison's book Seeing with New Eyes. He calls them 'X-Ray Questions' because they are useful in exposing your true desires deep down inside of you. Go through these, take your time, and above all...BE HONEST! Somehow Christianity has become people who think they have to be good and perfect, but the truth is we are still sinners drawn to worship false idols. So, enjoy this and I would love to hear anything the Spirit exposes in your heart. When idols are exposed and we find our joy, identity, and righteousness in Christ alone...it is then that we are seen by God as good, right and perfect.

X-Ray Questions

David Powlison, Seeing with New Eyes (pg. 132-40)

1. What do you love? Hate?

2. What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for? What desires do you serve and obey?

3. What do you seek, aim for, and pursue?

4. Where do you bank your hopes?

5. What do you fear? What do you not want? What do you tend to worry about?

6. What do you feel like doing?

7. What do you think you need? What are your 'felt needs'?

8. What are your plans, agendas, strategies, and intentions designed to accomplish?

9. What makes you tick? What sun does your planet revolve around? What do you organize your life around?

10. Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, security?

11. What or whom do you trust?

12. Whose performance matters? On whose shoulders does the well-being of your world rest? Who can make it better, make it work, make it safe, make it successful?

13. Whom must you please? Whose opinion of you counts? From whom do you desire approval and fear rejection? Whose value system do you measure yourself against? In whose eyes are you living? Whose love and approval do you need?

14. Who are your role models? What kind of person do you think you ought to be or want to be?

15. On your deathbed, what would sum up your life as worthwhile? What gives your life meaning?

16. How do you define and weigh success and failure, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable, in any particular situation?

17. What would make you feel rich, secure, prosperous? What must you get to make life sing?

18. What would bring you the greatest pleasure, happiness, and delight? The greatest pain or misery?

19. Whose coming into political power would make everything better? 20. Whose victory or success would make your life happy? How do you define victory and success? 21. What do you see as your rights? What do you feel entitled to?22. In what situations do you feel pressured or tense? Confident and relaxed? When you are pressured, where do you turn? What do you think about? What are your escapes? What do you escape from?

23. What do you want to get out of life? What payoff do you seek out of the things you do?

24. What do you pray for?

25. What do you think about most often? What preoccupies or obsesses you? In the morning, to what does your mind drift instinctively?

26. What do you talk about? What is important to you? What attitudes do you communicate?

27. How do you spend your time? What are your priorities?

28. What are your characteristic fantasies, either pleasurable or fearful? Daydreams? What do your night dreams revolve around?

29. What are the functional beliefs that control how you interpret your life and determine how you act?

30. What are your idols and false gods? In what do you place your trust, or set your hopes? What do you turn to or seek? Where do you take refuge?

31. How do you live for yourself?

32. How do you live as a slave of the devil?

33. How do you implicitly say, “If only...” (to get what you want, avoid what you don't want, keep what you have)?

34. What instinctively seems and feels right to you? What are your opinions, the things you feel true?

35. Where do you find your identity? How do you define who you are?

Other helpful sources:

Idols of the Heart by Elyse Fitzpatrick

Counterfeit gods by Tim Keller