Where is your life treasure?

Worship: reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacred personage, or to any object regarded as sacred.

Dedicate: to devote wholly and earnestly, as to some person or purpose.

               I spent many years in worship and complete dedication to  false idols.. False idols that were killing me. Honor and Homage? Devote to a purpose? WOW. Do I want my life's works to look like this? She spent her life wholly and earnestly dedicated to disappearing day by day...worshiping an addiction that had become her identity. This came dangerously close to being the way my life ended.

             Thankfully, God saved me and helped me to identify and begin dethroning the idols in my life. I must constantly ask myself, "is this thought or behavior giving glory to God and radiating light or is it glorifying the enemy and bringing darkness"? I could probably write a book on this but I want to focus this entry on a recent revelation.

             I stumbled upon an old e-mail thread between myself and my ex-fiance. This alone was enough to shake me at my core...as I began reading my part of the e-mail, my heart began to ache. I was once again faced with the grievous reality that I felt such an intense love for him though this love was never truthfully returned or appreciated but used and abused. Aside from my shaken but previously recognized pain, a new conviction weighed on my heart. I not only loved him, I worshiped him and worshiped the false relationship I built up in my head. The intensity of my e-mail to him painted a clear picture of this. Despite the painful events I was attempting to address in it, still the words extruded love. My eyes have been unveiled and I now see that underneath my proclamations of love hid an intense fear... of rejection, abandon, pain, being alone, and my own unworthiness. For these are the only things I knew came from Men in my life.

              Prior to my salvation, the idols of my life were at work to completely destroy me in every aspect. I worshiped things that only hurt me. What I realized is that even if the relationship was one of healthy love and respect, it never would have worked because God wasn't in it. I don't know how real and healthy romantic love looks and I don't know if I ever will but I hope to. I do know that I now live my life to glorify the one and only great I am. It's not perfect. I fail frequently. But no longer will false idols reign over my life. No longer will the enemy receive pleasure from my self-destruction. The relationship was another idol reigning over my life for quite some time... I was expending love that should be first given to God. God MUST be upheld on the most high of pedestals and with this... he takes care of all else. I hope to never again place any person, relationship, disorder, sin, or any kind of idol in a place that is meant for God alone. I hope that my life continues to stay centered around Jesus Christ and that all things in my life flow from that center.

So, what is an idol? 
For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Mathew 6:21 

• What do you treasure? 
• Where do you devote your time? 
• What can you "not live without"? 
• What do you give most of your praise and passion? 
• Where do you go to seek comfort? 
• What defines you? 
• What do you place your identity in? 
• What do you find yourself talking about the most? 
• Who or what is number one in your life? 

Do these questions generate any themes? Idols can be ANYTHING that is held above God... Work, Facebook/twitter, appearance, relationships, addiction, social status, money,sex... the list goes on and on. 
The main idols of my past had complete control over my life. I had become so entangled in them that I lost myself completely. For most of my life, my eyes were blinded so that my answers would reveal these idols and I wouldn't even notice it as an issue. 

I hope to spend the rest of my life treasuring, devoting time to, finding comfort in, worshiping, finding my identity in, talking about with passion, and placing JESUS CHRIST at his rightfully utmost high place over my life. 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, Hebrews 12:1 NIV