American Idols?

They honored and worshiped God, but not exclusively—they also appointed all sorts of priests, regardless of qualification, to conduct a variety of rites at the local fertility shrines. They honored and worshiped God, but they also kept up their devotions to the old gods of the places they had come from.....2 Kings 17:33 (The Message)

I was driving down the road the other day when this thought hit me. There are so many people that go to church and worship God, but still maintain the other "idols" in their lives. I asked the Lord to search my heart...have I done this? What have I put before Him?

We typically talk about idols in reference to religion (picture little Buddhas) or in reference to addictions (such as alcohol and drug abuse), but I wonder can we make our "schedules" an idol? What about our families? Can we make the mistakes of the past an idol that we do not even realize we are worshiping (as the scripture says, keeping up devotions to the gods of the places they had come from)? Worship means we meditate on and devote ourselves to something, it takes up our time, it consumes our thoughts. It begins to influence us, whether in a good way or bad.

It is easy to gloss over the Israelites in the Bible when they made their idols and worshiped them because we think that has little or no application to our lives today. No one I know has a golden calf in their backyard! But, yet, society continues to put more of an emphasis on things and people of this world, and less of an acknowledgment that God is the glue holding our existance together. Lately, I'm trying to be careful what I watch and listen to...because what we behold is what we eventually become. And, listening to political rants and doom and gloom newscasting is just going to leave me empty and fearful.

What else do we put before the promises and presence of God? Short of locking myself in my house and avoiding all other activity, how do I make sure that I have not created an idol out of something that was once innocent? Your thoughts?