Category Archives: Healthy Church

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20 Ways to Tell What Your Idols Are

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Before we can eliminate the idols in our life, we must first realize what (who) they are.

We all have idols. We are all idolaters to one degree or another. We all are in need of repentance and restoration. We all are in desperate need to undergo serious spiritual alignment so that our passions are proportionally directed at God and not at a god or gods.

So, how then do we discern what are our idols? How can we become increasingly clear-sighted rather than remaining in their power?

Here are twenty questions that we need to transparently answer in order for our idols to be revealed to us:

1.What do we fear the most?

2.What, if we lost it, would make life not worth living?

3.What controls our mood?

4.What do I respond to with explosive anger or deep despair?

5.What dominates our relationships?

6.What do we dream about when our mind is on idle-mode?

7.To what do our thoughts effortlessly drift towards?

8.What do we enjoy day-dreaming about?

9.What am I preoccupied with?

10. What is the first thing on my mind in the morning and the last thing on my mind at night?

11. Where or in whom do I put my trust?

12. What occupies my mind when we have nothing else to think about?

13. Do we day-dream about purchasing material goods that you (we) don’t need, with money you (we) don’t have to impress the people you (we) do not like?

14. What do you habitually, systematically and undoubtedly drift towards in order to obtain peace, joy and happiness in the privacy of your heart?

15. How do we spend our (God’s) money?

  • Jesus said, “Where your treasure is, there is your heart also” (Matt. 6:21).
  • Your money flows most effortlessly toward your heart’s greatest love. In fact, the mark of an idol is that you spend too much money on it, and you must try to exercise self-control constantly. Our patterns of spending reveal our idols.

16. What is my real, daily functional savior?

17. What is my real – not my [professed] – god?

18. How do I respond to unanswered prayers?

19. When a certain desire is not met, do I feel frustration, anxiety, resentment, bitterness, anger, or depression?

20. Is there something I desire so much that I am willing to disappoint or hurt others in order to have it?

When we ask ourselves these penetrating questions, there yields a continuity of our idolatry. The answers to these questions uncover the following:

  • Whether we serve God or idols
  • Whether we look for salvation from Christ or from false saviors
  • Whether we rely on our Deliverer or other pseudo-messiahs.
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Fighting Temptation

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All of us have things we wish we didn’t do. Maybe it is something small that doesn’t seem like a big deal, or it might be something that if discovered could destroy your world. It might be that you can’t stop talking about other people, you can’t stop eating, maybe you have to buy something every week and now have a closet full of clothes you don’t use, or maybe you can’t go a day without looking at porn.

Whatever it is, we all fight temptations.

What if there is a way out? What if there was a way to be free of falling into temptation? What if you could really fight temptation?

That’s what we will talk about this week as we continue our series in the book of James from 1:12 – 18.

I think this week has the potential to really bring freedom to a lot of lives.

Remember, we meet at 5pm at 6620 E 22nd St.

See you Saturday.

 

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Discerning Your Idols

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We often talk about idols of the heart and the gospel at Revolution. I will get questions about how you determine what your idols are, what is it that your heart longs for, how do you discern them and learn how the gospel transforms them.

Recently, I came across some great diagnostic questions in the Porterbrook curriculum that we will be using for our Surge School to discern what the idols of your heart are:

  • If you are angry, ask, ― Is there something too important to me? Something I am telling myself I have to have? Is that why I am angry — because I am being blocked from having something I think is a necessity when it is not?
  • If you are fearful or badly worried, ask, ―Is there something too important to me? Something I am telling myself I have to have? Is that why I am so scared — because something is being threatened which I think is a necessity when it is not?
  • If you are despondent or hating yourself, ask, Is there something too important to me? Something I have to have? Is that why I am so down — because I have lost or failed at something which I think is a necessity, but which is not
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What Pain & Trials Do

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We are kicking off a brand new series on James this Saturday. In one of the commentaries I’m reading, the author made this statement which summarizes what I’m talking about on Saturday really well:

We say that we believe that God is our Father, but as long as we remain untested on the point our belief falls short of steady conviction. But suppose the day comes – as it does and will – when circumstances seem to mock our creed, when the cruelty of life denies his fatherliness, his silence calls in question his almightiness and the sheer, haphazard, meaningless jumble of events challenges the possibility of a Creator’s ordering hand. It is in this way that life’s trials test our faith for genuineness.