Idolatry
One of the amazing gifts that God bestowed upon mankind is the gift of worship.
Man was designed for worship, it is engrained into every fiber of our being. In the garden our worship was centered on the Father, which is the rightful place for our worship. However, after the Fall, man chose what he would worship.
Most people will look at the word idolatry and attribute it to false religions and false gods. However, idolatry is a much deeper and a more dangerous sin than just false religions. It goes to the very core of your heart and the very core of your worship.
In modern times, most people think about worship in terms of worship music or the musical part of a church service. While this type of worship is important, true worship is how you spend your time and talent. Worship is what occupies your mind throughout the day.
Jesus told us in the Gospels that the most important command is to love the Father with all our heart, mind and soul. There is no room for anything else as a Christian. Yet, in the world you will see all manners of worship that have been accepted as normal. In autumn, you can see thousands fill stands to watch an NFL game. There are people that live and die based on the outcome of a game. Every election cycle you can see people worship at the foot of a political party. There are so many secular organizations that will speak against Christianity and yet their own ideology must not be questioned. The members of these types of organizations worship at the alter of that ideology. The list can go on and on in modern society, just as it could during Biblical times.
Idolatry is distorting the true worship of the Father.
The key to removing idolatry from your life is to take an inventory of what is occupying your time. Do you only spend the time with the Father once a week during Sunday service? Christianity is more than just a religion. It is a relationship with God, and when we look at it in those terms, idolatry becomes clearer. For example, could you imagine only spending time with your husband or wife for an hour a week? I doubt that marriage would last very long. The only true way to grow in the ways of Jesus is to make Him the priority in your life. Through that relationship and the time spent with Christ, He will make you into the person that God created you to be. However, this takes work on your part and that is the spiritual inventory. This must be done on a routine basis, and you must reorient yourselves to the Lord when you fall into false worship.
Matthew 6:33 (ESV): But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
The Father in Heaven knows everything that you need in life and He will satisfy those needs. We are to do one thing: seek God and everything else in life will fall into place. However, when we seek worldly riches or worldly attention, that is when we get caught up in a life that was not ours to begin with. Idolatry leads you down a path that was never intended for you, it is a distortion of the life that God has planned for you. In order to find the life that God wants for you, a proper order of worship is a necessity. This will allow God to work in your life to bring you through the sanctification process.
In order to live a true Christian life you must commit yourself fully to the Lord. You must take a spiritual inventory of everything that occupies space in both your heart and your mind. The Lord commands total devotion and it requires total devotion to live out the life that God has planned for you before you were formed in the womb. Idolatry is one of the greatest deceptions that satan has in his arsenal. However, you have the power to move away from idolatry in your life.
You must simply seek God first, and everything after that will be given to you from the Holy Father.