The Ten Commandments Project: Keep Yourself from Idols

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We are grateful for the opportunity to once again share a speech from one of the Ten Commandments Project Speech Challenge participants.

It continues to be very encouraging to listen to the outstanding speeches prepared by children, sometimes with assistance from a parent or someone else. Sometimes the children and youth have written the speeches themselves.

Either way, the truths that they share can encourage the faith of any other child, youth, or adult.

The Ten Commandments Project is a youth discipleship project that AFA has been sponsoring for around ten years or so. And each year, it gets more exciting to see the fruit that the Holy Spirit produces in the lives of the children and youth who participate.

Let us, as the church, seek to faithfully put our children to work more and more in the building of the kingdom of God in our world.

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Ten Commandment Challenge Speech

Mattie Parmer

14 Years Old

“You shall not make for yourself an idol...” (Exodus 20:4).

You may not realize what that envelopes. On the surface, you see no statues, no golden calf, no little people on the mantle, no worshiping animals like the early Egyptians, or no worshiping the stars like the early astronomers or philosophers.

God meant for us to hold Him higher, love Him more, trust Him more than anything else. To lean on Him as our first impulse and not superstition as previous people groups.

We can still practice idolatry without realizing it. For instance, after a bad day, instead of turning to God, we come home and sit on the couch and watch TV or stay up late the night before and instead of going to church, you sleep in or brush off your Bible reading because of it. I know we are all guilty of at least one of those, if not all of them.

Remember who died for you? Among these things: TV, friends, school, work, phone, family, or Jesus, who died and gave all for you?

To put things into perspective: the TV does not know you exist; your friends now probably will not be your friends in 20 years; good grades will not get you into heaven; work, you already spend 40 or more hours a week on; your phone is an inanimate object; and yes, family loves you, but Jesus loves you more!

How can we put these things above God? Jesus paid it ALL, and half of the time, we do not even acknowledge it. We have these things above God, but we were on His mind when He laid the foundations of the Earth and laid down His life for us.

The heart of our issue is laziness and lack of devotion, whether we realize it or not.

When I was given the opportunity to write this speech, it was humbling because everything that I have written, I am guilty of and applies to me.

I hope when people hear this, they do a heart check and think about this. I hope I have conveyed the importance of having God first and foremost in our lives and not taking him for granted. He died for us and we should hold Him higher than anything else. Thank you.

Great job Mattie!

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