You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. ~ Exodus 20:3-4
Not far into our marriage, I noticed my husband wasn’t making me happy. This was disconcerting because, after all, wasn’t that the reason I married him in the first place? During my teens, I had crafted a list of attributes that my life’s mate needed to have, and my husband met all the criteria – except hair and eye colour! So what happened? Had I made a mistake?
As I thought over the disappointment I felt, it hit me. My expectations were faulty. My husband wasn’t meant to be my “everything”. He wasn’t meant to be my primary source of joy, meet all my needs, and be there for me every waking moment. I was asking him to be something he was never designed to be. I had set him up as God, and he wasn’t equipped for the position. He had become an idol in my life.
Husbands and wives are meant to love, honour and serve one another. The Bible even talks about a husband loving his wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…(Ephesians 5:25), but this was different. This wasn’t pointing to a lack in my husband, it was pointing to a lack within me. Instead of going to God as the primary source of my joy, peace, security, affirmation, and love, all my hopes were wrapped up in my husband lavishing these on me, and when he didn’t, or more accurately, couldn’t meet my insatiable need for these things, I felt cheated.
It’s not just husbands who are flung into this precipitous position. It may be friends, other family members, or even our children whom we place in these lofty locations. But they, too, are unable to meet our idealistic thinking of the role they are supposed to play in our lives. I wonder if that’s one reason why there are so many broken relationships in this world. People were never meant to fill the hollow places. The space is too large to fill, the emptiness too vast, the amount of attention required too great.
There is only One who can fill the void: the One who created you with an innate need for Him. And yet, instead of intimacy with God, we look to all sorts of things to fill the emptiness: people, toys, clothes, food, drink, and fleeting fun. But all of these, when put before – or in place of God – are idols. They are temporary, counterfeit imposters attempting to take the place of the real deal. And we wonder why we’re unhappy. Why we’re dissatisfied. Why we feel empty.
Not all things we esteem are bad, but God wants first place in your life. What idols are blocking your view of God? Look at what you spend the majority of your spare time doing, or thinking about, and you might find an idol or two. Do they matter more to you than your relationship with God? If so, confess them, remove them from their pedestal, and put them in their rightful place in your life.
May you put God in first place in your life with no idols before Him.
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- Make a list of what matters most to you.
- Look over the list and see if anything on it trumps God in your life. If so, make the necessary adjustments to put God first.