1 John 5:21 says, Dear children, keep yourselves from idols. The Amplified Bible elaborates on this: Little children, keep yourselves from idols (false gods)--[from anything and everything that would occupy the place in your heart due to God, from any sort of substitute for Him that would take first place in your life]. (AMP)

It is imperative that you prevent any sort of substitute from becoming first place in your life. Fill your life with the true, living God, not a phony substitute.

You can tell what is important to you simply by examining how you spend your time. If you are spending so much time trying to make money that you don't spend any quality time with God, then wealth is more important to you than God. Likewise, if you are always spending time with friends and don't have any time to spend with God, then your social life is more important to you than God.

How you use your time is so important, because you can either invest it or waste it. However, if you waste your time, you'll never get it back. On the other hand, if you invest your time into forming a deep, close, personal relationship with God, then you will reap the rewards of such an investment for the rest of eternity.

Decide to put God first in your life: spend significant, quality, personal time with Him. Put the first, most important thing (God) first place in your life.

It can be easy to compromise one's inner life in hopes of maintaining a good outer life. While there is certainly nothing wrong with a good outer life, we can't allow our reputation with others to become more important than our reputation with God -- He desires to be the most important thing in every person's life.

King David knew the importance of putting God first in order to maintain a good inner life. In Psalm 27:4, he wrote, One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life. David made God -- and spending time in God's presence -- the one thing he wanted. For David, his inner life was more important than his outer life.

1 Peter 3:4 says that your beauty should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

While it is by no means wrong to have a good outer life and to look good outwardly, God values inner beauty much more. That's because your outer life is your reputation with people, but your inner life is your reputation with God.