Keep Yourselves from Idols

My personal story of finding freedom from my Idol of baseball.

Image by ian kelsall from Pixabay

The sermon I preached this past Sunday was out of 1 John 5:13-21. After nearly 6 months, we concluded John’s first letter.

This letter ends differently than most in the New Testament. There’s no final greeting, no clear closing remark, and no obvious exhortation as he signs off. What we get instead is a final statement that could use its own letter for clarification.

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”

—1 John 5:21

The purpose of my article today is not to search scripture and give a biblical overview on idol worship and its consequences — although there would be much content to choose from and I think that would be a fascinating venture.

The purpose of my article today is to simply share from my own personal experience the consequences of not “keeping myself from idols.”

My Relationship With A Familiar Idol

10 years ago — early March of 2014 — I was headed to Arizona for my first Spring Training in the Milwaukee Brewers organization.

If you would have asked that young 22 year old if baseball was his god, he probably would have laughed in your face. Okay, maybe not. I was much too kind for that. But I would have wanted to!

That young guy was full of zeal for the Lord, full of passion to see the Great Commission fulfilled, and full of conviction that he was going to serve nothing except for God.

As it happens, that young guy found out a few years later that not only did he have an idol — he had bet his entire life on that idol coming through for him.

As a result, my entire life came crashing down when I retired from baseball just a few years later.

It was like a bomb went off and the ripple effects were difficult to navigate.

God resorts to ripping idols out of our lives when we won’t hand them over willingly.

The best way I can describe it is to picture an exposed tree root. At first glance, it looks like a stick you can easily pick up and discard. However, once you start pulling on it you realize this “stick” is actually a root connected to a much larger web of roots.

By pulling up one root, you get all the rest, too. The impact area is much larger than you originally planned for.

In January of 2016, when I officially retired from baseball, God ripped the idol out of my life and I realized how large that impact area was in my heart.

When an idol gets ripped from our lives, it’s not pretty.

Here’s a short list of how not pretty it was for me:

• I questioned if my life had purpose