Here is an excerpt taken from Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long for God Alone, Revised and Updated by Elyse Fitzpatrick.


A Note for the Second Edition

“Over the years since I wrote the original manuscript for this book, I’ve become more and more aware of God’s great love for me in Christ. I’ve grown to see how, because of His compassion and mercy, He loves me whether I’m fighting my idols diligently or just sort of meandering my way through the day. He knows my weakness: the weakness of my love, the weakness of my mind, the weakness of my determination to love Him more than all else. And yet He loves me because of the work His Son has done for me in justifying me and calling me beautiful . . . even though I fall so far short of His perfect standard, embodied in His law as expressed in the Ten Commandments.

So although I still desire to develop wholehearted worship, to “long for God Alone,” and to help you do the same, my perspective on how to get there and what that actually means has changed. It has changed from looking primarily at myself to looking chiefly at Jesus’ work for me in the gospel. That shift in focus also transforms the way I will talk about idolatry in this book and how I think our hearts are ultimately transformed. So in this book you’ll hear more talk about love and more talk about God’s love for sinners, all to and for the glory of the Son. It’s not that I no longer care about obedience to the first commandment, it’s just that I’m walking a different path toward that goal and have a different motivation propelling me onward.”


Taken from page 9 of Idols of the Heart: Learning to Long for God Alone, Revised and Updated by Elyse Fitzpatrick, copyright 2016, P&R Publishing.