{"id":1621,"date":"2011-11-18T11:20:06","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T15:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=1621"},"modified":"2011-11-18T11:20:06","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T15:20:06","slug":"an-idol-by-any-other-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/?p=1621","title":{"rendered":"An Idol by Any Other Name&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>\u201cNot to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory,<br \/>\nfor the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!<\/p>\n<p>Why should the nations say,<br \/>\n&#8220;Where is their God?&#8221;<br \/>\nOur God is in the heavens;<br \/>\nhe does all that he pleases.<\/p>\n<p>Their idols are silver and gold,<br \/>\nthe work of human hands.<br \/>\nThey have mouths, but do not speak;<br \/>\neyes, but do not see.<br \/>\nThey have ears, but do not hear;<br \/>\nnoses, but do not smell.<br \/>\nThey have hands, but do not feel;<br \/>\nfeet, but do not walk;<br \/>\nand they do not make a sound in their throat.<br \/>\nThose who make them become like them;<br \/>\nso do all who trust in them.\u201d \u2013 Psalm 115:1-8 (ESV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong><em>Although most people don\u2019t visit temples to worship graven images and statues, many still practice some forms of idolatry in their lives.\u00a0 When we place more importance and priority on things of this world than we do seeking God\u2019s presence, we\u2019re doing exactly that.\u00a0 Be it money, technology, alcohol, sex or any other worldly endeavor; when we place temporal things above our Heavenly Father in our hearts, it pulls us from Him and obscures His voice.\u00a0 By identifying those idols in our lives and asking for God\u2019s help in removing them, we draw ourselves closer to Him and remove the barriers that keep us from becoming what He desires us to be.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cNot to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness! Why should the nations say, &#8220;Where is their God?&#8221; Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2088],"tags":[2045,3194,966,916,2146,2145,900,431,2147,253,2149,2148],"class_list":["post-1621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-inspirations","tag-alcohol","tag-daily-inspirations","tag-god","tag-heavenly-father","tag-idolatry","tag-idols","tag-importance","tag-money","tag-priority","tag-psalm","tag-sex","tag-technology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p18mMc-q9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1621"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1624,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions\/1624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.phatherphil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}