Revelation 9:20

All the other people, the ones who had not been killed in these plagues, did not repent of the things they had made. They did not stop worshipping demons—idols made of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which cannot see, hear, or walk.

Idolatry is the most serious of offenses in all the Bible.

This is because it is at the root of all evil, of any kind of wrong in the world, for idolatry is giving anything too high a status. It is elevating something or someone to a priority level which only God deserves and can satisfy.

Worshipping created things more than the Creator never leads to an abundant, full, and joyful Life—Life for which we are meant to live out. The only way to enjoy this kind of Life is to place God at the center of it. That is simply the only way it works.

“Worshipping” is bowing in the form of offering your time to something, offering your thoughts to something or someone, offering reverence to status this world deems worthy of our attention, and all of this inordinately, disproportionately in relation with what we are designed to offer to God.

We make sacrifices at the altar of comfort, on the altar of looking good—not just physically, but socially as well, the altar of pleasing others, the altar of work, and on and on.

The scary thing in this passage is that these people, after seeing a third of the earth wiped out, still refused to turn away from their idols, which are really demons.

Anyone who knows anything about addiction realizes that we can keep chasing our lusted after object of affection no matter what warning signs we see, no matter what it takes to keep feeding the insatiable desire that has taken over us.

Your idols will always lead toward doom and away from God.

Always.

The Spirit gave me a vivid vision a couple of months ago of me opening a window, and a bunch of evil birds flying in the house, surrounding and disturbing my wife and our daughters.

This is what we do when we pursue anything more than God. We open a window, allowing all sorts of bad influence, energy, and spirits in on us and those around us. We give permission to evil spirits to stay with us.