[Darris McNeely] Have you ever wondered about the modern idols that might plague our world? If you read the Bible, you read about idolatry, where people bow down to wooden images and stone idols. And God taught very strongly through Moses and the prophets against idolatry. But what about today? And, how might we overcome that?

I was going through the book of Acts in a class and teaching a group of ministers recently about preaching. And in Acts 19:20, this scripture kinda caught my attention, where it talks about the apostle Paul in the city of Ephesus and the preaching he did there for over 2 years and the success rate that he had. People turned away from the idols at the city of Ephesus, and they began to obey God, followed the teachings that Paul was giving them from the Word of God. It created a great riot. It actually but into the economic structure of the city when you read the story there. But verse 20 tells us something about, really, how this came about. It wasn't just the preaching of Paul. In verse 20, it says, "The word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed." The word of the Lord, the preaching of that word, the Bible, the Scriptures. What Paul had in his possession at that time, he preached the word. And that word was so powerful, so compelling, reaching into the hearts and to the minds of people who knew nothing but stone idols and silver images of a goddess named Diana, that they actually turned away from that and began to worship the true God. And what it says here in verse 20 is that the Word of God prevailed. Now, what that word means is it had a force and a power. It wasn't Paul's power, wasn't the force of his personality, it was the power of the Word of God. That's what prevailed and that's what turned people from the idolatry in the city of Ephesus in that day.

And, think about that. I think we all should as we apply it to our own minds today. We have idols, different types of idols in our world today. Some writers say that the biggest idol is ourselves. We really just worship ourselves today, and I think that's always happened, but it seems to be more prevalent today. And it may be a good place to start. But the Word of God is what we really should be sinking our mind and our heart into, and turning to God in that way and letting it, at least, have a force and a power prevail, if you will, in our own life and change our lives. And when we do, it can actually make a world of difference, just as it did with the apostle Paul and the people in that ancient city of Ephesus, where God's Word prevailed by its force and by its power.

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