How Can You Find the Golden Calf in Your Life?

You and I don’t melt down our jewelry and make physical statues and call them God, yet we sometimes give up what is important to us to prioritize the temporary, worthless things of this world. We tend to spend money on precious possessions like expensive cars, high tech toys, beautiful homes, or name-brand handbags, and then invest our time and energy and more money to keep them safe, secure, and spotless. Anything we love, think about, or serve (with our energy and time) can become a golden calf in our lives. Anything that we raise up in the place of God, revere, desire, or consider more valuable than our relationship with God can become an unknowing golden calf in our lives.

Our golden calf can be success, productivity, fame, the approval of others, or anything we strive for more than our spiritual growth and our closeness with God.

Sometimes we make our children our golden calf when they become our no. 1 priority and we stress about their health, their wellbeing and their happiness, more than we desire to please God by trusting Him with our children’s lives.

A husband or wife can put their spouse in that position of worship if they obey their spouse’s desires over God’s, seek to please their spouse more than they seek to please God, or simply desire their spouse more than they desire God. Some wives put their husbands in the position of God, expecting them to meet all their emotional needs and expectations, instead of letting God meet their emotional needs.

At times, work becomes our golden calf because it creeps into the no. 1 spot on our priority lists and consumes our time and energy and we put everything else beneath that. Maybe money is your golden calf because how much you have (or don’t have) determines your security or contentment level or because every ounce of energy you have is going toward making more, paying off debt, or saving up for something you desperately want.

Here are seven ways to identify and eliminate the golden calf in your life.

Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/AndreyPopov