“When people say, ‘I know God forgives me, but I can’t forgive myself,’ they mean that they have failed an idol, whose approval is more important to them than God’s. Idols function like gods in our lives, and so if we make career or parental approval our god and we fail it, then the idol curses us in our hearts for the rest of our lives. We can’t shake the sense of failure.”
I am an idol worshipper. And so are you. John Calvin famously said “the human heart is a perpetual idol factory”. For this reason among many we must daily go to the cross, confess our waywardness, and seek the Lord’s approval rather than man’s. Don’t allow the idols in your life to keep you from knowing God. Put them to death as soon as they are produced by the factory of your heart.