American Idle

I have a confession to make. Our family likes to watch American Idol. While I can’t endorse everything about the show and its past seasons, we have fond memories of some of the highlights. Like when Mandisa signaled “I’m believing God” and all Beth Moore Believing God readers or Bible study participants knew what she was doing. Or when Bo Bice sang out “How far is heaven?” Or this season, when the entire cast belted out Shout to the Lord before millions of viewers! Our home erupted with our own shouting!

We are spilt as to who we wanted to win this season. The boys like David Cook, who is still in the top two. Kenzie liked Jason with his dredlocks and Brooke with her folksy, wholesome charm. (And her spunk as she stood up to Simon who predicted that Hollywood would corrupt her strong morals.) My husband Todd works afternoons so he’s never actually seen the show. For me, it was a toss up between Brooke–who was eliminated a few weeks ago and David Archuleta–the fresh-faced teen, who still remains.

While I do have trouble with the name—I’d much prefer American Star or something of the sort—I love seeing these unknown singers compete over the weeks improving their performance skills and attempting to fulfill their lifelong dream. It makes me smile.

However, in the Bible, idols are nothing to smile about. Over and over again we are warned to have nothing to do with them. We are neither to make them with our hands nor to form them in our hearts. While the children of Israel may have had trouble with the former, being tempted to fashion golden calves and such, more often we modern day believers struggle with the latter. We set up secret, hidden idols. Idols in our hearts.

An idol is anything that we put in the place of God in our lives. It may be the attention of others, or money or material possessions. For some it is their career or their athletic ability. Others are addicted to television, romance novels or the Internet. With me it was food. (click here to see my 700 Club interview on Pat’s Skinny Wednesday)

I was idle for too many years about my idol. I sported too much weight on my female frame. I consumed too many calories and burned too few to boot! The result? I was sick and tired. Weak and miserable. But for years I refuse to take action. I sat idly by and it was killing me. Literally. When my cholesterol level skyrocketed over 300 and the chest pains became more frequent, I finally took action. God was ready and willing, as He had always been, to meet my every need. He daily supplied the strength. He lifted me up when I failed. Over 10 months and100 pounds later, food was finally put back into proper perspective in my life.

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Me in August 2005, crushing my hubby!

 

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And me……10 months later!!!!

It wasn’t hard for others to see that I had an issue with gluttony. But other secret idols of the heart can be more evasive. While handmade idols of world religions are easy to spot, these secret idols of the heart are not always so. Sometimes only we know they exist. So we procrastinate. We say, “Perhaps I’ll start tomorrow. Or next Monday. Or next month.” Before we know it, we can count the years we have devoted to our idols. Idle, wasted time.

Just as we are sometimes the only ones who know our idols exist, we are the only ones that, by God’s grace and through His power, can tear them down. We must stop being idle. Action is required. Just as a marathon runner takes one step at a time, we must too.

Are you ready to begin? The sound of an idol breaking is a beautiful one to God’s ears.

Hey…and while we are on the subject, my friend and fellow Proverbs 31 Ministries speaker Marybeth has made a request of me and I’d like to know if anyone else would be interested. She wants me to host a blog discussion about my weightloss—how I got started, how I kept motivated, what scriptures I memorized, what I ate, how I worked exercise into my mommy schedule, how maintenance is going, etc… These are items I certainly can discuss with her over the phone, but I would consider hosting a week long forum on it here if others are interested. After all, shorts and tank top season is just around the corner here in the Midwest! If you would be curious about this topic, would you leave a comment on this post stating so? Thanks!!!!

Idol-bashing blessings,

Karen

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