Apostles Church

The following questions will help us to uncover our far idols (the abstract idols that we desire and that motivate us (comfort, control, power, security, pleasure, approval, etc.) and our near idols (those concrete objects that we pursue in hopes that they will secure for us the far idols; near idols are things like work, beauty, relationships, food, money, etc.) Those potential idols that are detected by these questions need not be bad things, but are often very good things that we have an over-attachment or an inordinate longing for. The great reformer John Calvin wrote, "The evil in our desire typically does not lie in what we want, but that we want it too much." As we move through these questions, answer them with sincerity and ask the Lord to help you detect both far and near idols that you have made more fundamental than God.

What do you organize your life around?

What do you want, crave or wish for? What do you obsess over? What preoccupies you? What do you find your mind instinctively drifting towards? What fills your conversations?

What are you willing to sacrifice an inordinate amount to attain?

What do you fear losing? What if you lost it would make you lose your desire to live because all meaning in life would be sucked out? All desire to move forward would be lost?

What do you rejoice over? What, present or hoped for, brings you or would bring you the greatest pleasure, delight? What must you have?

What would bring you the greatest pain?

What is your worst nightmare?

What makes you angry or frustrated?

What causes you anxiety or great stress?

How do you define success or failure, or weigh significance or insignificance?

Where do you go for comfort, refuge, safety?

Who, real or imagined, can make your world better, safer, more satisfying?

Whom must you please? From whom do you desire approval and fear rejection?

How do you define yourself?

(Many of these questions are taken or adapted from David Powlison's book Seeing with New Eyes.)