Choosing What You Adore
I’m a fan of filling your home with things you love as a way to turn any kind of living space into a refreshing place for yourself.
Part of the reason I surround myself with things I appreciate in my home is because I spent a lot of time surrounded by things I didn’t like. Memories of my childhood home include a stretch of continual construction projects paired with the harvest-gold, orange, and avocado-green decorating trends of the seventies. As soon as I could pick out my own color palettes and furnishings, I did so, and I’ve been particular about my surroundings ever since.
I’ve lived through feeling both uncomfortable and comfortable with my surroundings. Feeling comfortable in your home can help you experience a lot of peace. And while the peace from home sweet home will not satisfy you on a soul level like the Lord’s peace will, the way it can make you feel at ease should not be sold short.
The danger, however, comes when you obsess over your belongings. When you surround yourself with things you love or that, like Marie Kondo describes, “spark joy,” do you find yourself devoted to those things? Do you long to find comfort and fulfillment from your possessions? Do you serve your belongings, or do they serve you?
Throughout Scripture, it’s clear that God is the one true God worthy of worship. Yet it was so easy for people throughout the Bible to worship false gods and sacrifice to idols, and that tendency hasn’t disappeared from the human heart. There’s a continual struggle over who or what will take the focus of your attention and praise.
When we obsess over or adore our comfy, cozy homes, we run the risk of turning our living spaces or belongings into idols. Do we turn to our homes for validation? Do we feel fulfilled once everything is “just so,” from the furnishings to keeping things clean? Do we get sucked into a search for bigger and better possessions in hopes that they will fulfill a longing that only the Lord can fill? Are we worshipping created things instead of our Creator?
Consider what we’re reminded of in Psalm 24:3–4 (NIV):
Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol
or swear by a false god.
Are you trusting in an idol? Are you forsaking your relationship with the Lord by idolizing your home, comfort, or convenience?
It’s so tempting to adore what we have, but things will only end up stealing our time and robbing our affections from what they should be on: the Lord. Truly, he wants us to find our worth and our rest in him. After all, he instructed it in his Word. But how can we do this when we live in a world filled with so many distractions?
Maybe you’re in hot pursuit of creating an ideal home. Yet spending countless hours and way too much money on establishing, furnishing, and maintaining our residences reveals a crystal-clear picture of our perspectives. If we hold our homes in such high regard, or if we revere where we live, we’ve fallen into a trap—spending our time, money, and affections on something that’s not eternal, necessary, or worthy of our praise.
How do we get out of this trap?
Psalm 106 provides a rescue through an interesting pattern of prayer and praise. The psalmist began with praise, then thanked God for his blessings. He remembered the Lord’s deeds, then in verse 4 requested, “Remember me, O Lord, when you show favor to your people; help me when you save them.” After he asked to be remembered with favor, he spent most of Psalm 106 repenting for the Israelites. And what was one of their many sins? Verse 36 tells the simple truth: “They served their idols, which became a snare to them.”
Idols became a snare to the Israelites. They also have a way of sneaking in and stealing the service you and I could give to the Lord. To prevent that, let’s pay attention to the psalmist’s example and imitate it. After confessing the idolatry, the psalmist spoke of the Lord’s discipline and then the Lord’s kindness. He pleaded for salvation and ended with blessing and praise. This psalmist’s action of recognizing the snare of idols, then repenting from serving them, is what we should emulate. Beg your heavenly Father to save you from idols, just as the psalmist did on behalf of the Israelites:
Save us, O Lord our God,
and gather us from among the nations,
that we may give thanks to your holy name
and glory in your praise (Ps. 106:47).
Then bless the Lord’s name in praise.
Idolatry is a matter of the heart, and it’s between each of us and the Lord. The things that creep into my life and crawl onto the throne of my heart are different from the things that creep and crawl into yours. But we all deal with the same root issue. This tendency to worship something other than the Lord is spelled out throughout Scripture, so it’s nothing new.
The ruthless truth about idolatry is that the Lord won’t sit by and allow his children to be led astray. No matter what your snare is, if God is not honored and respected for who he is, he will make the weakness of your idols known. But when you choose to honor and respect him as the Lord Almighty, his lovingkindness and forgiveness are always waiting for you.
Taken from The Tension of Tidy by Hilary Bernstein. Copyright (c) 2025 by Hilary Bernstein. Used by permission of Kregel Publications. https://www.kregel.com/