Last night Laura and I were talking about a womens study that she is participating in with our Bible Fellowship class at church. The topic was Idols. The author wrote, “in biblical terms, it is something other than God that we set our heart on”, I thought this definition was alright, a little open ended. Then as we continued to read the author made an important distinction, between a functional god versus a professed god. A professed god is the “who or what we say our god is”, while the functional god is “who or what actually operates as our god”.
The thing is, for most Christians, our functional god’s are often things that are good within themselves, but become a distraction to the one true God. They are things we substitute in attempt to fulfill our deepest desires, which can only be met by Christ.
These Idols never satisfy, you would think we would catch some kind of clue that ‘these functional gods’ were not what we desired in the first place. Lewis once wrote that “the human soul was made to enjoy the object that is never fully given”. At least not in this life. It seems that these desires in themselves are nothing more than a pointer. Our earthly desires are never fulfilled. Yet we still place functional gods in that gap in attempt to appease the longings.
I wonder if we, Christians, will ever realize that the thing we have desired was that which we have been professing all along?
DR. MATT CAPPS 
I am participating in the same study with ladies from my church. Very eye opening…
I think at times we even make our “professed God” our idol. Often our “professed God” does not resemble the Biblical account of who God really is. So often we see God how we want Him to be instead of for who He is.
You pose an interesting question…”I wonder if we, Christians will ever realize that the thing we have desired was that which we have been professing all along?”
It made me stop and think.