I cannot recommend this book enough. It has laid my soul bare and liberated me to pursue with all of my heart the one, true idol: the Lord Jesus.
Order it today! Buy several copies and give them away as Christmas gifts for people you love. They will thank you for it! Go here to order it from Amazon.
Another great quote I read this morning:
"Idolatry is not just a failure to obey God, it is a setting of the whole heart on something besides God. This cannot be remedied only by repenting that you have an idol, or using willpower to try to live differently. Turning from idols is not less than those two things, but is also far more. 'Setting your mind and heart on things above' where 'your life is hid with Christ in God' (Colossians 3:1-3) means appreciation, rejoicing, and resting in what Jesus has done for you. It entails joyful worship, a sense of God's reality in prayer. Jesus must become more beautiful to your imagination, more attractive to your heart, than your idol. That is what will replace your counterfeit gods. If you uproot the idol and fail to 'plant' the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back.
"Rejoicing and repentance must go together. Repentance without rejoicing will lead to despair. Rejoicing without repentance is shallow and will only provide passing inspiration instead of deep change. Indeed, it is when we rejoice over Jesus' sacrificial love for us most fully that, paradoxically, we are most truly convicted of our sin. When we repent out of fear of consequences, we are not really sorry for the sin, but for ourselves. Fear based repentance ('I'd better change or God will get me') is really self-pity. In fear-based repentance, we don't learn to hate the sin for itself, and it doesn't lose its attractive power. We learn only to refrain from it for our own sake. But when we rejoice over God's sacrificial, suffering love for us--seeing what it cose Him to save us from sin -- we learn to hate the sin for what it is. We see what the sin cost God. What most assures us of God's unconditional love (Jesus' costly death) is what that most convicts us of the evil of sin. Fear-based repentance makes us hate ourselves. Joy-based repentance makes us hate the sin.
"...The gospel asks, What is operating in the placeo f Jesus Christ as your real, functional salvation and Savior? What are you looking to in order to justify yourself? Whatever it is, is a counterfeit god, and to make a change in your life, yo umust identify it and reject it as such."
(pages 171, 172, and 174)
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