What's up, friends, it's E! And welcome to this week's episode of Midweek Rise Up. I am so grateful for all of your support.

It means the world to me, you guys. I love seeing the Bible verses that resonate with you and the different words of encouragement that you're leaving in the review section.

It makes my heart so happy. And it makes the podcast page a place for that deep breath that we all

really need. So thank you for that as well. So now let's get to the good news. The word for this

week is idols. Whether you grew up in a church home or not, I have no doubt that you've come across

this word. But I want to take it a layer deeper and really dig into what is an idol,

what does it mean to worship an idol, and why do we worship them? But then you might say,

okay, E, that's cool and all that we've been able to identify these idols, but how do I remove them

from my heart? I got you. We'll touch on that also. From the biblical definition, as mentioned in Romans 123,

an idol is anything that you elevate above God or give to God's rightful place in your life.

In the Webster Dictionary, an idol is an image or a representation of a God used as an object of worship.

And then below that, it has a little side definition that

says, a person or thing that is greatly admired, loved, or revered. I find this back-to-back

definition fascinating. On one hand, you have the idol being a god in lowercase G that is an object

that is worshipped, and then the other you have a person that you completely

admire and love that can be an idol. We'll get into that as well. But first, to set the tone of all

of this, I want to jump into two different parts of scripture that really illustrate for us

the meaning of idols. Both of these passages in the Bible are very personal to me because I've

physically been in the exact spots of where they took place.

The first is at Mount Carmel in Israel and the second is in Athens, Greece.

I can't even begin to tell you there is nothing more powerful than being able to go to these places in the world where the Bible absolutely comes to life and you literally can walk the word.

It is so cool. Okay, let's hit the Old Testament first. There are several instances in the

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