Daily Devotional
We Become What We Worship

September 10, 2024

Ponder This

The ancients worshiped a god whose name was Mammon, the god of wealth and possession. We have people today who still worship that god. They don’t call him Mammon, but they are committed to riches, wealth, success, and achievement. People’s ambitions shape what they do. An idol is really just a magnified sinner. Man deifies himself and then because he deifies himself, he worships himself through worshiping his idol. If a man can make a god out of sex and then he worships sex, well, he’s got to give himself to it. If a man makes a god out of money, he worships money and nothing is too good for his god, so he gives himself to that cause.

The man molds the idol and then the idol molds the man. A man takes his own worst desires and so magnifies them that he makes gods out of them—his lust, his greed, his fears, his hates, his desires—and then he begins to worship them. We become like what we worship. When you worship God, you become like God. You worship Jesus, you behold His face, you’re changed to the same image. But if you worship an idol, you become like your idol.

• How have you been affected by the idols you have worshiped?
• Why is idol worship so dangerous? Why is it not tolerable in the life of a Christian?

Practice This

Pray against idol worship in your home and in your church.