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Idols in Your Life

Idols in Your Life

Idols in Your Life

Three quotes from the teaching on februar 14, 2024

Idols in our lives keep us away from God, but also from freedom and joy—as long as they are hidden, they only grow.

We often try to hide our idols instead of letting go—but only true surrender breaks the power.

Idols are revealed where we seek peace or satisfaction in places other than God.

Short description of the teaching

This teaching explores what idols are and how they can infiltrate every aspect of life—not just as physical figures, but also as habits, status, fear, money, or even pious Christian activities. It challenges the notion that it’s only about ancient religious statues and emphasizes the motives of the heart. Using many biblical examples, particularly the history of the Israelites, it shows how even those who have witnessed great miracles can be tempted to place something above God. There’s a strong call to let God reveal hidden idols, and the motivation to remove them should be love and a longing for closeness to Jesus—not external pressure or religious demands. In a down-to-earth and practical way, it illustrates how anything can become an idol if it takes over the heart’s focus—even something that was good or right in itself. It concludes with an invitation to reflection, humility, and openness to God’s guidance, so that anything standing in the way of a close relationship with God can be removed.

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Discipleship,General Teaching,God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit,Identity and Forgiveness,Repentance and Baptism,Spiritual Life & Prayer,Udfrielser og åndelig krigsførelse

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  • Scriptures from the teaching on 'Idols in Your Life'

Exodus 20:3-6
Jeremiah 17:5-10
Isaiah 44:6-19
Jeremiah 17:8
Genesis 31:32-35
Isaiah 42:8
Jeremiah 10:6-10
Jeremiah 3:13
Mark 12:28-31
2 Kings 23:1-27

NB! The summary below is an automatically AI-generated text from the teaching itself. Errors may occur to a greater or lesser degree!!
Watch the whole teaching on YouTube instead!!

  • Summary of the teaching on 'Idols in Your Life'

Andreas Slot-Henriksen talks about idols in your life and how these are not just physical figures but anything that can take a place in the heart or daily life higher than God. It begins by emphasizing that God clearly warns against having other gods besides Him, which was established at Sinai when God gave the commandment: “You shall have no other gods before me.” This commandment applies to both the golden calf of old and today’s more invisible forms of idols. With humor and relatable examples, it tells of the Israelites who, after dramatic miracles, quickly end up forming a golden calf while Moses is away for just 40 days. It points out that humans have an insatiable urge to worship, which God alone has placed in us. The problem arises when this longing to worship is shifted from God to anything else—even things that can be good in themselves: family, work, money, health, entertainment, habits, and even pious actions. It’s not the idol itself that is dangerous, but that it takes over an area of life or identity.

To unfold this, a wealth of examples is included: Fitness can start healthy but become an obsession where one’s identity and value rest in performance. Health, food, shopping, family traditions, control over finances, or chronic lack of money—all these can steal attention from God if they come to dictate choices or create fear, competition, or pride. Even time with the Bible, prayer, fasting, or service in God’s name becomes idols if the motivation is guilt, performance, or fear—not love. It is pointed out how performance, habits, or fear can be coded as ‘condemned family patterns’ in identity, so one believes certain problems “have always been there” in the family and accepts it as a natural part that is therefore not challenged. Also, technology, social media, and gaming are mentioned as today’s possible idols—not because they are necessarily wrong, but because they risk taking first place in life, time, and thought. Advice is given on how to spot idols: What do you spend time and money on? How do you react if someone challenges you in an area? What things—even good and necessary ones—do you refuse God access to?

The teaching shows with examples from both the Bible and today how God repeatedly calls people away from idols back to Himself. The Israelites are a recurring mirror, where there is a tendency to mix faith in God with idol worship, even shortly after great miracles and powerful experiences of God’s intervention. It is explained that the motivation to clean up should stem from love for Jesus—not fear of punishment or to meet norms from others. The heart must be laid bare honestly and humbly, and what is hidden or defended must be brought to light—for as long as the idol is hidden, its power only grows. Rachel, who hides household gods and sits on them and lies to her father, is used as an example: When the idol is hidden, the price is identity, freedom, and closeness. Idols take root in the hidden, and both family patterns and societal ideals can lead to even God’s gift—such as work or wealth—becoming a stumbling block if the surrender is not complete.

It is explained that balance is important; God does not want anything to take the place that belongs to Him. Even necessary and good things must be kept open to Him so that they do not become idols. Examples are given from Jesus, who repeatedly sets life’s focus on love, humility, and surrender—“Love the Lord your God with all your heart… and your neighbor as yourself.” It shows how easy it is to forget Jesus amid activities and engagements and how one can lose oneself and one’s first love in even the best Christian activities. Teaching, self-study, and understanding of demons and spiritual warfare are also mentioned as fields that easily steal time and become a “diversion” from the Holy Spirit’s balance.

It concludes with a call to honest reflection: To ask what time, money, and energy are spent on, and if irritation, anger, or denial arises when something is challenged, it may be a sign of idols. Importantly, when God reveals something, it is to lead into freedom and joy, never to condemn. It is recommended to bring God in and ask Him to show where idols may be hiding and to choose to remove them to get closer to Jesus—not to satisfy others’ opinions. God’s motivation is always love and closeness, not demands or shame. Think of the Israelites who stood by the Red Sea, experienced God’s miracle, but quickly forgot Him; learn from it, and use the experiences to go deeper in the knowledge of God and especially to guard the first place in the heart.

Quote from the teaching:
“Idols in our lives can only be removed if we honestly invite Jesus in—and let love set us free.“

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The topic we’re going to discuss now is idols in your life. Idols in our lives are not something we should collect. In fact, they’re something we should try to give away, throw far away, burn, get rid of, cancel, renounce, all sorts of things. We shouldn’t be collecting them.

And why shouldn’t we? We shouldn’t because I need to read from Exodus chapter 20. It says, it’s God who wrote it on the two stone tablets: 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. You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I punish the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments.

Wow, here we actually read about the first generational curse that God places on people six generations back. So if you have idols in your life, where you place them equal to or higher than God, then we know there’s a curse, and that’s not very nice. And I know this is the old covenant, but I also know that God’s heart hasn’t changed.

Many people think that God was one way in the Old Testament and then became another in the New Testament, but it’s the same God. It’s just a new covenant he’s established. He has a different way, you could say, of executing his judgment. He has a different way of making us righteous. That’s a whole other side of the matter.

But the problem is, we humans are peculiar creatures, really peculiar. If we go back to Egypt, where the Israelites, the canonical people, were. They were slaves for I don’t know how many years. They first saw God’s wild ten plagues over Egypt, and it’s not small things. These are wild things that happened. They stand and see it all. They’ve seen everything.

What happens then? They’re led out of Egypt. They’re led to the Red Sea, and there, oh no, what should they do? The waters part. Wow. God sets his massive pillar of fire and blocks the entire Egyptian army. They all stand there looking at it. Wow. Just imagine that sight. It’s like, wow, do we have a great God or what? And the water, and these Israelites, oh, oh, do we dare to go through?

But they walk in trust with God all the way across with caravans and cows and horses and everything, and the pillar of fire still holds back this army. Wow. Well, they get across, and suddenly they hear horses, soldiers, they’re coming, and they just speed up because they definitely don’t want to be slaughtered.

But what’s so amazing is that God closes the waters. Not a single Israelite loses their life, but the entire Egyptian army loses theirs. All the Israelites stand on the cliff and look down and can see what just happened. Just imagine the silence when the waters closed, in awe, the spray. Just imagine standing there and seeing what God just did to save you. Oh, it’s so wild. It’s completely wild.

Well, these silly Israelites, they get led further into the wilderness, and everything is just jubilation, good, and God is great, and it’s all fantastic. And it says, during the day they’re led by a cloud, and at night by God’s pillar of fire. They see him. They don’t have any food or anything, but God sends manna from heaven every single day. Not only that, but he gets water from a rock that follows them every single day. The rock moves, it follows them. This is the living God we’re talking about.

Honestly, a lot of exciting things happen.

Go home and read Genesis and all the others. It’s wildly exciting reading. But what happens is, God ordains that now they should have a constitution, they should have the Ten Commandments. Moses goes up the mountain, up there he gets the Ten Commandments written on stone tablets, and the people build an idol in the meantime because Moses is gone for 40 days.

Then they come back to a huge golden calf. All their silver and gold and rings and everything has been melted down into a golden calf, and they’re dancing an Indian dance around it with Aaron. It’s Aaron who was the goldsmith. Uh, that’s just stupid, excuse me, they’ve just seen how great a God we have. But Moses was gone for 40 days. What were we supposed to do? You still had the pillar of fire, you had the cloud, you had the manna, you had the water coming from the rock, and yet you don’t believe in God.

Oh, isn’t it… Wow, God must be really frustrated sometimes. And it really shows the idolatry mixed with the belief in the living God, and it’s a mess, and it’s really, really, really bad. And fundamentally, it’s about what’s in our hearts. It says in the Book of Jeremiah 17: This is what the Lord says: Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who draws strength from mere flesh and whose heart turns away from the Lord. That person will be like a bush in the wastelands; they will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell in the parched places of the desert, in a salt land where no one lives.

Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is in him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit. The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I, the Lord, search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve.

So our heart is just a real mess, and it’s often our heart that leads us astray. Our heart tells us we have needs that aren’t true because our heart doesn’t speak the truth. And I would say, right now, as we go through this with idols in general, do yourself a favor: Don’t put up barriers. Don’t say, I have no idols in my life, I turned away from that a long time ago.

What if God has something he wants to point out in your life, something that actually separates you from getting closer to God? So try to let the barriers fall down, and instead of coming up with claws, say: Okay God, is there something in my life I need to look at? Then take it as help to get even closer to God, because it’s really… God is a jealous God. God only wants us to worship him. It’s not because he’s mean or cruel or power-hungry, it’s because he knows he’s the only God. He knows he’s the only one, there’s no one like him. He deserves all praise and all honor.

It has nothing to do with us having a power-hungry God, but rather we have an amazing God who knows the truth. If you, when you start reading through the Bible, if you really look for it, you’ll actually find that in every single book throughout the Bible, there’s something about idolatry in one way or another, and it’s really quite interesting. It’s because these are some of the things that prevent God from being with us. These are some of the things that make God hate idolatry.

If you read through the Old Testament, you’ll see again and again and again how the Israelites…

Flirt with idols of all sorts, and God hates it and comes down hard on it. They separate themselves with this and that, and time and time again, they take it back in.

And many today think that when we talk about idols, we think of Buddha, little Shiva figures here and there. We think of all sorts of strange stone ornaments and various things, and those are idols, for sure. So many, when they think of idols, they think: Well, Jesus spoke about money as an idol. No one can serve two masters, he talks about mammon, that’s an idol too. Yes, it is, but nonetheless, there are a host of other idols that sometimes get overlooked because we get so used to them.

Sometimes, when you get used to something, and things become a habit, you forget to think about why you do it. You just do it. Sometimes it’s healthy to just stop and say: Why, why, why am I doing this? What makes me do this? I just want to read from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 44, from verses 6 to 19.

This is just to give God’s heart on: How does God really see idols? Besides it being in the Ten Commandments, what does he say about idols? What does he mean? Isaiah 44, 6 to 19: This is what the Lord says, Israel’s King, the Redeemer, the Lord of Hosts: I am the first, I am the last. There is no other God but me. Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and lay out before me what has happened since I established my ancient people, and what is yet to come—yes, let them foretell what will come.

Do not tremble, do not be afraid. Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago? You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me? No, there is no other Rock; I know not one. All who make idols are nothing, and the things they treasure are worthless. Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant, to their own shame. Who shapes a god and casts an idol, which can profit nothing? People who do that will be put to shame; such craftsmen are only human beings. Let them all come together and take their stand; they will be brought down to terror and shame.

The blacksmith takes a tool and works with it in the coals; he shapes an idol with hammers, he forges it with the might of his arm. He gets hungry and loses his strength; he drinks no water and grows faint. The carpenter measures with a line and makes an outline with a marker; he roughs it out with chisels and marks it with compasses. He shapes it in human form, human form in all its glory, that it may dwell in a shrine.

He cuts down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. It is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it.

Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me! You are my god!”

They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand. No one stops to think, no one has the knowledge or understanding to say, “Half of it I used for fuel; I even baked bread over its coals, I roasted meat and I ate. Shall I make a detestable thing from what is left? Shall I bow down to a block of wood?” It’s just a block of wood, and why, and I know it’s not just because.

All sorts of occult things are put into such things here. But this is just to show that humans have this insatiable desire to worship something. And it’s because God has placed a longing in our hearts to find him, to worship him, and then we pop out and do something as silly as everyday life goes. First, you cut down, then you plant a tree. The tree grows up because of the rain, then you cut down the tree. Then you use some of it to warm yourself. Then you use some of it for something else, then you have a little left, so you make a silly god, which you worship, and then you start praying to that god: Won’t you save me? Then you have a bit more wood, which you chop up and make some fire and some fuel from, and then you take something from the leftovers, and then voila, you have yet another god. It’s silly.

I really understand God in this: silliness, silliness, silliness. But what is idolatry today beyond this? Because there are just so many other aspects to it than just this little stick or crystal or whatever it might be that becomes a block of wood or whatever strange figure you have. Many, many of the figures are directly demons. Many are from the Hindu world or Buddhist world or much else, which is directly idolatry. Often, it’s things that make you have a little competition with yourself, so I mention several different things.

I don’t know about having a competition with yourself. I want to see how much I can achieve in this. Okay, let’s say I go to the gym. I’ve decided that now I have to go through this program, and I really have to be effective. Next time I go to the gym again. Now I have to do it a little better than I did last time. That means I start having a competition with myself. I have to get better and better and better. Suddenly, snap, this fitness thing sticks to me, and I can’t get out of it, and I actually think it’s pretty cool because I really want to. I want, the Bible says, I should honor my body, I should, I should, it’s a temple for God. It should look good, so I really don’t go to the gym, but it’s healthy to go to the gym.

And what’s interesting is that because it starts out healthy, the devil can just grab hold of it, and it turns into an idol. It can be diet. It can be food. It can be this whole thing about living healthily. You start in a tiny little place where you want to live healthily, but suddenly, the diet takes over and controls you 100%, and you can’t get out of it. Generally speaking, it’s the things you put in place of where God should have been. Something like the controversial: smoking, for example. People often do it to find peace. They find peace through that cigarette. You can just step outside, take a drag, and great, you’ve got peace.

But who is our peace? It’s Jesus who should be our peace. That means you’re putting something in a place where Jesus should be. It can also be other things. I don’t spend enough time on my Bible. I’ve only read for forty-five minutes today, and if I don’t read for an hour, then I’m not good enough. Reading your Bible can become idol worship, and I’m not saying it’s wrong to read your Bible, it’s not. It’s great to read the Bible. Read, read, read. But if it starts bringing in self-condemnation, or if you suddenly become a slave to having to read your Bible, otherwise God can’t…

Accept you. You’re not good enough. And so on and so forth. Do you know what it’s like to be a bargain hunter? Oh, I didn’t get to buy the deals that were there. Oh, how annoying, man. Some people can get so caught up in it that it suddenly becomes an idol, and there’s nothing wrong with buying deals. There’s nothing wrong with living cheaply. We also buy deals and live cheaply, but there’s something wrong if it suddenly starts to control your life.

And these small things, you don’t immediately think about them. You can also see idols in family patterns, for example. Yeah, in my family, we’re just so stressed, we really are. It’s just all over me, it’s just enormous. I can really feel it, I have a long workday, and if I don’t take care of myself, I just get so stressed, and I really have to be careful not to get stressed because it’s so hard to get out of.

I can just feel myself starting to talk like crazy because I’m already getting stressed now. I can hear it, and I’m starting to stress myself out. Right now, it’s just terrible, and that’s also something that can almost become, you accept it as part of your life because it’s always been like that in your family. And that pattern actually becomes an idol in your life because the rest of the family has had it as an issue, so what you basically thought, well, it’s just… no, it’s actually become part of your identity, which you can’t live without now because you get a kick out of telling how busy you are.

You suddenly become important in other people’s eyes when you talk about how busy you are, or what. There’s nothing wrong with being busy once in a while. It’s okay. Just remember to stop and find peace, but there’s something wrong if it becomes part of your identity, and you suddenly can’t figure out: Who am I really if I’m not busy? Who am I then? Who am I if I just have to sit on a chair? I can’t figure that out, that’s not what I was created for. I was created to work, man.

Yeah, yeah, you can also go to the other extreme, where you don’t do anything at all. You can get all… Well, I’m definitely not going out to do anything, I’m not, because I have to sit and pray here all day long, that’s what God has called me to. No, that’s not what the Bible says. The Bible says you’re lazy if you don’t get a job, and we can go to either extreme, and it’s so important that we remember all the way through that things don’t become an idol in our lives.

There are people who, when they turn 40, say: Oh, I absolutely have to, I have to book an appointment with the eye doctor now because I need reading glasses. Now I’m 40. Well, do you have trouble seeing? No. No, my eye doctor says it comes when I turn 40. And then, when I’m 45, I also have to go to the doctor because then I have high blood pressure. Okay, is that something you’re struggling with? No, no, but I know it comes when you turn 45.

So suddenly your health becomes this really, really fine little idol, where you have to be one step ahead all the time, instead of resting in what God has actually placed in you, what God has said about your health. When do you ask God: God, do I really need reading glasses? God, do I really need something to lower my blood pressure? No, you don’t. You’re a man, or…

A woman in your next age, get going. So to identify what can be idols, I’ve mentioned a few things, and there are many more idols than that. You just have to start looking through your life. But idols give a form of symptoms if you have them in your life, and let me outline some of them.

If you have a feeling that you’re constantly working hard, but you feel like you’re never getting anywhere, when a problem comes, you turn to another source instead of turning to God. If you slowly discover, maybe even unconsciously, that your heart is moving further and further away from God. If you suddenly experience that there is discord in your family or in your life, it can – not always, but it can also be that there is a form of idol.

That your faith becomes dry, it’s often because we put something else in place of Jesus. If you experience that other people suddenly distance themselves from you, it’s often because something is happening – a form of idol worship, a change in your mindset. And unfortunately, the Christians who might distance themselves should have opened their mouths and said: “Hey, I can sense something is happening, a transformation, a change in your life. Are you okay? What’s going on?”

And then don’t be the one who says: “There’s definitely nothing happening in my life. You shouldn’t interfere.” Instead, try to be honest and say, maybe it’s self-deception, because others can see a transformation, but you can’t see it yourself, so your reaction will be to go into self-defense. It’s often because you’ve taken some form of idol worship into your life, where you feel the need to defend yourself.

You see, what’s so interesting about idolatry is that it can be completely ordinary things. It can be Facebook, social media, just those basic things. We need to understand that Satan loves when we have idols. We also need to understand that he is really, really, really, really, really, really, really good at getting idols into your life.

And the reason or the way he does it is often by making them really good and healthy things. For example, going to the gym or whatever, some really healthy and good things, and then he comes in and adds a twist of his own diluted poison or whatever it’s called, laid-back or whatever. And then he just ruins everything, and it goes wrong, or he adds glue so you can’t let go of it again.

This means you get a great job. God blesses you with a job you’ve been praying for a long time. And you’re like, “Wow, thank you, God, thank you, thank you, thank you.” Then the devil comes: “Hey, you have work, in that job? You could also get promoted now. Just need to work a little more.” So: “Wow, that’s actually cool. I just had the thought that I could get promoted. That’s cool. I should try. Oh, then I really have to prove something to my boss, so he can really see that something’s happening here, that I’m capable.” So I work a little harder, and then you work a bit more.

It starts with 45 hours a week, then slowly goes up to 50 hours a week. Then things start to get messy at home because you’re almost never home when you’re up to those 55-60 hours a week. And suddenly you become dependent on the job, you simply can’t step back. And where was your time with God, the one who gave you the job? It ended up becoming an idol for you, and God was pushed to the background.

It can be finances. It can be about being filthy rich, and maybe God really wanted to provide for you and

Made you rich so you could use the money for God’s work. There’s nothing wrong with having a lot of money, but there’s something wrong if you cling to it and say it’s your money. No, it’s God’s money, it’s God who decides over it. It’s God who should manage them, and if God gets to manage your money, wow.

But there are many who can’t figure out how to manage their money. So either it’s all just mine, and I’m afraid to give anything away because you never know what might happen tomorrow, and it’s good to have a little saved up. Yeah, yeah, but what if you die tomorrow? Then it would have been better to have money saved up in heaven.

But it can also be poverty, it can become trendy to be poor. It can become a whole idol. And suddenly you get 1000 kroner at the door. 1000 kroner, I’m afraid to keep them, I’ve never had so much money, I have to give them to someone here. So God tries to reach you, but you’ve gotten an identity of being poor, suddenly you can’t get out of it, it’s almost become a new idol for you.

It can be entertainment. There’s nothing wrong with being entertained, it can be really fun. Gaming, many games that are really, really bad. There are some innocent games, you can sit and play Farming Simulator. Yeah, maybe I should do that, then I can learn a bit about… No, I don’t want to.

But it’s social media, uh uh uh uh, phones in general. Wow, they can take time, and I simply don’t believe there are many who can say they haven’t spent too much time on it at some point. I can also be the one to say it has happened to me too, and I’ve simply done it in periods. So I’ve deleted my Facebook app on the phone because I don’t want it, and then it’s really a problem because when people start writing, because it’s kind of my mission field, then I can see it’s not so good, then I miss replying to too many, so I install it again.

But then I put it on a new page on my phone, where it didn’t use to be, so the habit of just turning it on and then Facebook, it’s not there anymore. So butut, oh, it’s gone. Oh yeah, it’s gone. I’m not supposed to go there, it’s not supposed to control me. I’m supposed to control it, back in the pocket.

And sometimes you need to put something else in place and make some changes if you want to break those habits, so it doesn’t get out of hand, so it doesn’t become one of those common things, like sexuality, for example. God created it so beautifully, he wants it to be between a man and a woman who are married, wants it to be in marriage and only in marriage.

But suddenly the Devil comes. You could also just try to see, if you just write something on the internet and click, then… It’s really quick, it doesn’t cost anything, so boom, you jump on, and immediately the Devil digs his claws in, and then you become addicted. Suddenly you got an idol, and it’s not just any idol, but you’re walking in sin. So you have both an idol, and it’s a sin.

It can also be something like, so I really struggle with this, it’s personal hygiene, and I pray several times a day and stuff, or you probably thought I did, but no, something like really being obsessed with your appearance so much. You can’t, you don’t dare go outside your home unless you have 15 layers of makeup on and have done your hair and everything else.

And have the stiffest clothes and the newest clothes on because we have to look good. For whom, for what? There’s nothing wrong with looking good. Yes, do make an effort with yourself. But be careful it doesn’t become an addiction. Be careful it doesn’t take over. Be careful it doesn’t take all your time, that you stand in front of the mirror and spend hours there.

Ah, should this hair be there, or is it nicer there? No, here, maybe a bit higher up, I think. What about this hair, it should also go up here, oh no, now it fell down again. You can spend hours, and then at the very end, when you’re about to use the hairspray: I have no more spray left, then it was all wasted.

Yeah, another idol that many believers go through at some point in their lives is simply this. They think they always have to act on their faith in a way that makes them slaves, and it’s not that it’s wrong to act on faith. We should. We should act on our faith, but the motivation for it should be that we love Jesus. The motivation shouldn’t be: Now we have to go out and see how many we can heal, and we have to do this, and we have to do that.

And all of a sudden, you’ll experience walking past someone with a cast, and suddenly you get that feeling: wow, I should go pray for him, even though you know it’s actually not the right thing. You might actually experience the Holy Spirit saying, you shouldn’t do that right now. I have another plan for you. I want to use you over there instead, or you should do this or that… But because your mindset is so focused on healing being the only thing that works in your life, if you don’t pray, then you’re not good enough.

And then the devil uses that in your life, and if you walk past the man, you’ll suddenly get the wildest, craziest guilt. So what God created so beautifully, that we should reach out with love, ends up becoming an idol, and it’s such a difficult balance. The problem is, if we don’t follow the Holy Spirit’s guidance and find a healthy balance, it ends up becoming another religion, and that’s not what God wants.

He doesn’t want religion. He wants us to go out, and of course, it should be with God’s miracles and all these things that should follow, but it should be a healthy balance, and it’s the Holy Spirit that leads us. Even basic things like fasting can become… Oh, I have to fast at least so many days a month. I have to fast so often, I have to do this and that. Says who?

Yes, you should fast. It’s in your Bible, just like you should pray, you can’t get around that. You should fast, we’re all called to it. There’s enormous power in fasting. It’s a whole teaching in itself, but you can become a slave to fasting, so suddenly it’s not you and the Holy Spirit agreeing on when it is, and sometimes it’s not just the Holy Spirit, sometimes it’s you and only you who need to make a decision.

Many think: No, but I don’t know, Holy Spirit, can’t you just tell me when I should fast, can’t you just… Sometimes, come on, sometimes it’s you who just needs to make a choice and say: I will fast because I want to humble my body before God, and I want to walk with Him. How many days will you fast? Oh, I need to pray about it, I need to… No, you don’t always… Come on, just make a choice. Sometimes we can be so much that we can’t do anything unless we…

God wants us to make the choice ourselves to honor Him, and that’s where we need to be careful that it doesn’t become: Now I have to fast every 14 days, two days a week. It can…

It might be a choice you’ve made. Just be careful it doesn’t become a deviation for you. If you take a longer fast, be careful it doesn’t become a competition with yourself. Oh, but I did 15 days last time, so I can do 20 next time. If I did 20 last time, then I can definitely do 35 next time. Because you shouldn’t just do it to outdo yourself. If you want to do it because you want to honor God with it, and your heart is to honor God in it, go for it. But when the competition comes into it, that’s one of the symptoms that we’re getting into something bad that starts to become idol worship.

It’s exactly the same with teaching. Oh, there’s so much Christian teaching, but sometimes you can consume so much teaching that you forget Jesus in it. We hear about Jesus, but we forget to do what Jesus said we should do. Oh, how many times have I seen that. Oh, how many times have I seen that. You want it so much, and you dive in and dive in and dive in, and you find all sorts of things about a specific topic, and I need teaching from him, and I need to hear David Grins, and I need to hear Andrew Wommack. I need to hear bam bam bam bam bam and David Pawson. Oh, and all the others, just need to have them all, and then I need all these teachings precisely on this area, and when I’ve got that, oh, then I just, ah.

And it ends up that you just hear so much information, and you hear it, and you hear it, and you think, wow, this is good. It’s just so awesome, this. You might take so many notes, and you save it, and you archive it, and you’ll take it out again, but you forgot to seek God. You only sought all sorts of other teachings. You forgot that your wisdom should come from the Lord, and I just want to tell you, now I’ve been in a free church for many, many years. I’ve heard a lot of teaching in my life, where I went out and acted on my faith.

The first two hours of my entire life were when I was on the street, where I humbled myself, where I absolutely didn’t want to, where I went out and did all these things that just weren’t me. A little quiet introverted office mouse like me, who had to go out and approach people and ask if they had any ailments or pain, and I had to go out and pray for them, and who had prayed for many before in church and never experienced anything happening. I suddenly stood there in the middle and knew that when I prayed for someone, absolutely nothing happened. And this was ridiculous, and my pride was at stake, and a lot of things happened.

But being out there, where I had to be broken in every way because I didn’t want to be there, taught me more in those two hours than 25 years on the church bench did. So if you really want to learn something about God’s kingdom, go out and be God’s kingdom. Go out and do God’s kingdom. It’s great to hear teaching, but sometimes you can also teach yourself to death, and then it becomes an idol for you. Go out and do what it says. Go out, be a light. Go out and let the Holy Spirit guide you. Go out and let the Holy Spirit take you to school.

Where I’ve gotten the most slaps and learned the most is actually because the Holy Spirit has arranged things, and He has taught me some things. He has taken me to school. It’s not because I’ve heard Him say, you should. No, He has arranged things. I’ve seen positive things, I’ve seen negative things, I’ve learned from my mistakes, and I’ve learned from what was great. And I promise you, if you take Him by the hand and say, I’m ready, even if I don’t want to, because I think it’s

Boundary-pushing. It’s probably not exactly what I’ve been called to. We are all called to be disciples. We are all called to be witnesses for Him. I’ve prayed all my life for God to show me what my calling was. It was probably the last place I ever got an answer. It’s in my Bible what it means to be a disciple for Him.

And when you step out and become a disciple, and it doesn’t turn into idolatry, but where you truly go with a heart because you want to pass on God’s love to people, then God opens doors. And suddenly, quietly and calmly, you find out what your calling is in your life. Because we are not the same, and our callings are not the same, but often He just doesn’t reveal it until He sees someone willing to go and be free.

Be set free from demons. Be set free from illness. It can become a completely insane idol, so much so that you start diving into tons of demon names and reading their characteristics and so on. That’s fine, I know there are different demons, and it’s okay to know a handful of them, but it’s not okay when it starts taking over your time. When what you actually start diving into is: How can I learn the characteristics of demons? How can I learn about all these generational curses I need to break, and how can I do this, and how can I do that?

It says we should be discipled. That means, take someone who knows more than you, take them by the hand and say: Show me. It’s actually incredibly simple, but many spend countless hours searching and searching, and it can get really serious. It can become so much idolatry that as soon as you are set free, you pick up the phone and call to get the next appointment. That’s just wrong.

Then you haven’t understood who Jesus is at all, because you spent the time finding out who the demon is instead of finding out who Jesus is and what promises He has given into your life. And those promises are what set you free. You can never keep your freedom from demonization if you don’t learn who Jesus is and what He has done for you. Never. It’s not possible.

Because if you don’t know that it’s the truth that sets you free, you’ll never be free, because it says they will try to come back again. So instead of diving into your ancestry and all sorts of other things, dive into: Who is God, and what does Jesus say, and what does Jesus say anyway? I am. Who am I? Because if now the lineage is broken hereby, I have chosen to die to myself by going into the waters of baptism and coming up again. There is an enormous power in that. Enormous.

I remember we prayed for someone once who had been to a health fair at one point. She chose to give her life to Jesus. And she was baptized as a child and all sorts of other things, but then when she chooses to say: I really want to be baptized now, fully under water, because baptism actually means fully submerged. The moment she is baptized under water to belong to Jesus, a transformation occurs, and a few weeks later, one of her clairvoyant friends calls her and says: How are you doing? I’ve been so worried about you. I usually can always feel you, but I just can’t feel you anymore. It’s like you’re not there. What happened? I was baptized to belong to Jesus. Something happens in the spiritual world. It’s just good.

When you remove an idol, you also have to let God in. You can’t just say, now I’m removing an idol. You have to let God come into…

The areas of your life where you have removed this idol. Why? Because, as we read before, he becomes like a tree planted by the stream. It sends its roots toward the watercourse. We do not fear when the heat comes. Its leaves are green. It does not worry in drought and does not stop bearing fruit.

So just to sum it up briefly: How do I spot these idolatries? What do I spend my time on? What do I use my finances for? Do I get angry if people warn me against something, for example, teaching or anything else, or something in my life? And what is the fruit of what I do? Those are the four simple points where you can see.

I was actually confronted just in relation to this thing about getting a word. I was really confronted during – was it this week or last week? I can’t remember. I got a word in connection with a dream, which was served to me like: “This is for you.” And now I’m not supposed to tell what it was about, it’s actually irrelevant, but it was quite intense. Really, really intense. And if I took it, then yes, you could say that everything God had actually placed in me was a big lie, and I just knew right away that it was wrong.

But how did I take this? I could choose to say: “You know what, you need to take that further out, because you are simply crazy, the lid, that there, no way, no say.” I could also choose to say: “I renounce that, that’s not me.” But what did I do? I said: “Thank you for being obedient, for saying what you got.” And then I started praying to Jesus: “Jesus, if I really have this problem, which I have received, and which I just can’t identify in my life, if it really is me, won’t you please show me where it is? I don’t want it to be me, and you really have to show me if it is me. But I also don’t want to close my eyes to it. Imagine if I can’t see the forest for the trees.”

See, that’s humility, which we all should have when we come before God. Everything we receive of different things should be tested and held up against God’s word and should be tested by Him. But often, pride is one of the things that makes you think: “It’s definitely not me.”

Idols are – I’ll stop in a moment, I’ll get it together – idols are something you try to hide. It’s often something you’re ashamed of. It’s often something you don’t want to be exposed. Therefore, you can react violently when it’s pointed out, but you can also react in silence.

I don’t know if you remember the story when Jacob lived with Laban for a long time. If you want to read it, it’s in Genesis, probably 30 – this is 31. I’ll just read a bit in a moment. But what happens is that Jacob gets married to Rachel, who is Laban’s daughter, and Laban cheats him again and again and again. But God is just with Jacob and the whole lineage, and it’s just God, He is just – yes, He is so.

And then it says that now Jacob is called to leave Laban and is told to leave overnight, without Laban knowing about it. Then it says in Genesis 31:19: “While Laban was out shearing his sheep, Rachel stole her father’s household gods.” Rachel had some idols that she stole. She didn’t tell anyone. She just took them.

So here’s what happens: they flee in the dead of night, and Laban finds out they’ve escaped, and he also discovers that the household gods are missing. And the funny thing is, when you realize that someone has taken your household gods or idols, anger flares up. There’s no one…

No one is going to take these from me. It’s a bit like when you’re confronted with something in your life that you might need to look at. No, he gets pretty angry.

Then it says here from verses 32 to 35, where Jacob says: But the one you find your gods with shall not live. This means Jacob knows that household gods are rubbish. Jacob doesn’t want them at all. In fact, he wants the person who took these household gods to be punished. Search what I have, with our relatives as witnesses, and take what belongs to you. Jacob didn’t know that Rachel had stolen them.

So Laban went into Jacob’s tent and into Leah’s tent and into the two maidservants’ tents but didn’t find them. After he came out of Leah’s tent, he went into Rachel’s tent. Now, I won’t read more, you can read the rest. Anyway, Rachel had taken the household gods and put them in the camel’s saddlebag and sat on them. Laban searched the entire tent but didn’t find them.

Rachel said to her father: Don’t be angry that I can’t stand up for you here, but I’m having my period. And Laban searched and searched but didn’t find the household gods. And I actually find this a bit funny because I think it’s quite interesting that it says here that she was having her period. So she didn’t stand up. She’s sitting on this camel saddle because they’re hidden under the saddle.

Household gods are some of the most impure things. If we look at the Old Testament, a woman was considered impure when she had her period. She actually had to leave the camp, I think it was for seven days or something like that. So the fact that she says she’s having her period while sitting on these household gods, to me, it’s just like: Yes, that’s the heart of it, it is. But Laban, he’s completely obsessed with these household gods, just wants them back.

Yeah, well, let’s skip over all this. I’ve taken way too many scripture references, that’s not good. Yeah, one of the scribes who heard them debating and noticed that Jesus answered them well came over and asked him, meaning Jesus: Which is the first of all the commandments? Jesus answered: The first commandment is: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.

But you can’t love God with all your heart if your life is cluttered with distractions, especially if you know about them. If you don’t know, you can ask God to really show you your life. What are the areas? What do I need to put away? What doesn’t please you? God will show you if your heart is truly genuine.

But if you’re planning to sit on those idols with your period, so to speak, not you, Mikkel, but if you’re planning to sit on those household gods to hide them, then there’s something wrong. Then there are really some things you need to deal with. It’s not a shame to say: I simply didn’t know. Forgive me, God. Thank you for really, really, really showing me, and then get back on the camel or the horse or… and I didn’t want to read it now, I had planned to read it, but I won’t.

But I will say to you: Go home and read 2 Kings chapter 23 verses 1 to 17. It’s actually incredibly exciting. It’s about King Josiah, where we read about how he purged the idols. I think it’s the greatest purge ever done in Israel’s history. There are so many interesting…

It also mentions what kind of god you worship when you walk on coals and such things. There are really many exciting things. I really recommend you read it if you’re interested in this spiritual stuff and idols and Moloch and Ba’al and all these demons. They are mentioned in 2 Kings chapter 23 and the first 27 verses. It’s really exciting reading.

And again, remember that yes, these are real physical idols, but many other idols can just as well be sent by the Devil into your life with the sole purpose of pulling you away from what Jesus really has for you. He has so much. He has so much for you, so when you think it might be hard sometimes because “Oh, I might be a little fond of this,” you can never remove an idol in your life if others tell you to. You mustn’t, and you shouldn’t.

You might realize, “Wow, there was an idol in my life, great, thanks for saying it,” but you need to remove the idol because you want to get closer to Jesus. The motivation shouldn’t be that other people say you have it. You should do it because then you can’t find the motivation. The motivation should be that you want to love Jesus, that you want to be closer to him, you want to be there for him, with him, together with him, you want… oh, what you want. So that’s the motivation that should make you remove your idol, not someone coming and saying, “Hey, you seem to have a problem with chewing too much gum. Hasn’t that become an idol for you?” No, I don’t think so.

No, but it’s just, if people come to you, remember to take it in love and don’t get offended by it, and then move on with yourself and think, “Okay God, is this something that actually makes me not honor you through it? And if I don’t, won’t you please help me transform this because my heart is really… I just want to be close to you. I really want to honor you. I just want to praise you.”

And then consider, if you had been an Israelite who was led across the Red Sea, having just seen it part and close, boom, in this silence, this deep, deep, deep reverence for God. Ask yourself: There is that God, and only that God, I will serve. Nothing else in my life should be put in place of him.

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