Facing Idols

My friend wrote on her blog the importance of giving up things for Lent, saying:
"Lent is a time to fast from something that is near and dear to us – probably a little too near and dear to us. If you’ve ever tried fasting from food, you know that it does funny things to you. For example, being hungry makes me tend to be crabby and irritable. Any kind of suffering does that to us – it shows up who we really are. It brings our sins to the surface. Since Lent is about dealing with our sin, fasting helps us face that sin in ourselves to fight it directly. It’s hard, and sometimes it seems like I make more backward progress than forwards. But if nothing else, being so confronted with our sin makes us more appreciative of what Christ did for us – Like the beautiful story of the “sinful woman” in Luke 7:36-50:“Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven—for she loved much. But he who is forgiven little, loves little.”"
Tim Keller recently wrote a book called Counterfeit Gods where he talked about the fact that we all have these idols in our lives - good things that we have made ultimate things. So in coming to Lent we have the opportunity to suffer and to face some of those idols in our lives as they're exposed through the suffering of giving things up. We have the chance to enter into suffering. 
This is cool to me because I know that there are so many times when God allows suffering into our lives to grow us and to reveal various sins. But over Lent instead of waiting for the circumstances to come about, we are saying, "Jesus, I love you more and I know there are things in my life that should not be there. I know that there are thoughts, ideas, and beliefs that have resulted in me loving things more then I love you. So now, I want to love you more and I want to allow these things to be secondary as you are primary; I want to surrender all to you." 
We can face those idols and repent.