You ARE a slave. I AM a slave. We ALL are slaves to either one thing/person OR another! Consider…
Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. 20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God… (Romans 6:16-22, ESV)
Whoever or whatever we are slaves to is our god! If anything or anyone is our god rather than the True God, that thing or person has become an idol! And you probably know that God has a lot to say about idolatry.
“Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.” “Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry…” “You shall have no other gods before me.”
How do we identify the idols in our life… who or what we are enslaved to? Answer these questions: 1) What do we think about when we have nothing else to think about? 2) What or who are we MOST protective of? 3) What or who do we spend the most of our money on? 4) What or who do we invest the most of our energy toward?
When we answer those questions honestly, we will be well on our way to identifying who our functional God is. And consider this… an idol doesn’t have to be anything evil. An idol can be something that is good. And idol is identified when we spend an inordinate amount of energy on a good thing!
Think on these things for a while and we will look further into this topic tomorrow (God willing).