Eyen: “Who’s your idol?”
Me: “What?”
Eyen: “Who’s your idol?”
Me: “Well, I don’t have one. I don’t like to put anything or anyone above Jesus. Who’s your idol?”
At this point, I was pretty confused. That’s a weird question that honestly I don’t know if I’ve ever been asked so bluntly. I was wondering where she was going with this.
Eyen, a 16-year-old Vietnamese girl, sat across from me and preceded to tell me about her idol. Some Korean singer had just killed himself the day before, and she was heartbroken. She cried the whole day.
I couldn’t believe she had labeled him as her idol. That she so freely talked about it and recognized it as one.
What if we did that? If we went around asking one another what our idols were? If we were honest with ourselves about it?
I asked her if she had ever met him. She said that she knows every single song of his and knows all about him. She didn‘t even know Korean. She would just read the sub titles. But I asked her again if she KNEW him?
The longer I sat there, the more she opened up about not having any friends and that she doesn’t have anyone to do anything with. After sitting with her in that for awhile, I shared who Jesus is with her and told her that He will always be with her if she receives him as her best friend. It’s a relationship He wants to have with her. I explained all that God has done for her, and that yes she will go through hard things and will lose more people, but she will never lose Jesus if she decides to receive him into her heart.
So I prayed for her. For her to see and feel the truth of the cross. And I asked her if she wanted to pray for herself to God but she asked here right now? And I said yeah why not! If you are ready to receive Him fully, now is the best time! But she said she would later.
After that conversation, I’m believing God will continue to pursue her, but in that moment, it took me back to all the not yets I’ve said over the years.
It reminded me of how patient God is, and that He wants to be chosen just like we want to be chosen. There’s no forcing.
We either say yes to the eternity that’s already there in our hearts or we say not yet. We either say yes to moving to another country to tell people about Jesus or we say not yet. We either say yes to removing ourselves from a negatively influencing community or we say not yet.
God will never force us. He’s patient.
But when we say not yet, we are only hurting ourselves. It puts off all that He has for us.
Sometimes I think we are scared not of what God won’t do, but we are scared of what He WILL do.
Idols will die. They will let you down. They will break. They will fail you.
But God…
He will never fail us and He will never leave us. He’s always there. He’s there when I’m missing home and need someone to talk to and listen to me. He’s there when I don’t know what to say to a hurting 16-year-old Vietnamese girl. He’s there even when I don’t feel like He is.
He’s always there.
Would you pray with me for idols to be demolished and destroyed, and for our hearts to return to our first love, and for the world to not be afraid of what God will do any longer?
