Christian, did you know that even today, in our modern world, you don’t have to travel very far to find former idolaters? That’s right, even here in Kentucky in the 21st century, you don’t have to travel around the world to find people who were once worshippers of idols. You don’t have to go to the humid jungles of South America or to the arid plains of sub-Sahara Africa. Nope, all you have to do to see a former idol-worshipper is to get up and go take a look in the nearest mirror. Staring back at you, you’ll see someone redeemed from a life of vain idol worship.

The truth is that we worship that which we most highly regard. And before we acknowledged Christ as our Lord and Savior, we regarded ourselves most highly. We were a god unto ourselves. We sat on the throne of our hearts and lived for our own glory, comfort, pleasure, and pride. But now that Christ is our Lord, all that has changed. We no longer regard ourselves most highly; we regard Christ most highly. He is our God. He sits on the throne of our hearts and we live for his glory, honor, and praise. We once worshipped the idol of self, but Christ has saved us from that vain idol worship. In ancient times, idolatry often took more obvious forms (like sacrifices to wooden or stone figures, etc.) but it had at its root the same issue: the worship that rightfully belongs to God was wrongly given to a created object or being.

Listen to what Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere so that we need not say anything. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come” (1 Thessalonians 1:8-10). Like these Christians Paul wrote to, we have turned from idols (the idol of self) to serve the living and true God.

No doubt when these Christians became followers of Christ, they made a clean break with their former ways of idolatry. But turning away from the idol of self is more challenging in some respects. You can throw a physical idol out of your house and never see it again, but every day of our lives, the idol of self is trying to reassert itself into our lives, trying to drag us back into our old ways of living for self instead of living for God. So this week, put to death the old idols of self-promotion, self-glory, and self-serving; turn away from these things and give all your worship and attention and devotion to the Lord.