The idol of ambition is distinct from the idol of control in one specific way: control is about how you're pursuing the dream, ambition is about why. I had a God-given calling to speak and share, and for years I pursued it with status, fame, and self-proving as the real engine. I was seeking recognition, not serving people. I was building my own platform, not building his kingdom. God didn't open those doors, not because the dream was wrong, but because a dream with that heart behind it produces nothing that lasts. The process of breaking it was humbling. I had to see my heart clearly: I wanted success for all the wrong reasons, and I wasn't in a place to lead because I hadn't found my own way yet. The surrender that followed was full: I stopped looking for opportunities to speak, sought a quiet and private life, let the ambition stay dead and buried for years. And then God brought it back. Not on my timeline, not in my form, and not without requiring me to answer the harder question: are you willing to do this for me, not for yourself? The song Center by Bethel became my filter: if my days tell a story, let it be of you only.
The idol of ambition lives at the level of motive. I had a God-given calling and pursued it entirely for myself. From a young age I wanted to be significant. I wanted stages. I wanted to be valued. And when I started pursuing that dream in my early career, the engine behind it was status, fame, and the need to prove to myself that I could do it. I was steamrolling ahead and steamrolling over people. I was regurgitating ideas I barely understood. God didn't open those doors. Not because the dream was wrong, but because the motive was.
This episode traces the difference between the idol of control, how you pursue the dream, and the idol of ambition, why. I trace the arc from pursuing stages for my own glory, to recognizing the ugliness of that motive and surrendering the dream entirely, to God resurrecting it years later, to my then trying to do it safely while also wrestling with how to integrate faith and professional life without keeping them in separate boxes. The song Center by Bethel Music became the anchor: if my days tell a story, let it be of you only, everything for the honor of your name.
- The idol of ambition is not about what you're doing, it's about why. You can pursue a God-given dream entirely for your own status, your own glory, and your own sense of worth. The dream can be right and the motive completely wrong.
- God doesn't open doors for the wrong heart. I pursued stages for years with the wrong motive and nothing stuck. The doors he didn't open were a grace, not a failure.
- Recognizing your ambition as an idol requires looking honestly at what you want from the outcome. Status? Recognition? The ability to say you did it? Or truly to love people and point them to God?
- Surrendering ambition doesn't mean killing the dream. It means burying the self-oriented version of it and waiting for God to resurrect it with the right heart and the right timing.
- Integrating faith and work means not keeping them in separate boxes. The professional version of me and the hungry-for-Jesus version of me are the same person. I spent years trying to keep these separate and it produced a performance, not a life.
- Looking back: everything in my life that is good, that I love, that I'm grateful for, I never planned for. That was all God. It's the things I planned and tried to make happen that didn't last.
- Doing something deeply uncomfortable for God's glory is often the clearest proof that the motive has shifted. It's hard to be self-serving when you're airing your worst failures publicly.
What is the idol of ambition and how is it different from the idol of control or pride?
Ambition as an idol is specifically about the motive of the heart. Control is about how: making the dream happen in your own timeline. Pride is about what: putting your hope in what you've accomplished. Ambition is about why: what is actually driving you to pursue what you're pursuing?
These three often operate together. I had a vision to speak and share. I controlled the execution, trying to open my own doors. I was proud of any stage I got near. And the ambition underneath was entirely self-oriented: status, recognition, the need to prove I could do it. It was all about me.
The reason the idol of ambition is worth its own episode is that it's the hardest one to see while it's running. Control looks like impatience under pressure. Pride looks like coldness. But ambition looks like passion. It looks like drive. The question that cuts through it: when this succeeds, what are you hoping for?
I wasn't doing it for him. I wasn't doing it to point people to Jesus. I wasn't doing it for his glory or his honor. I wasn't doing it to make a difference. I wasn't doing it because I loved people. I wish, I wish I could say that that's what it was, but it wasn't.
Amy Dardis, Episode 27How do you pursue a calling with the right heart after you've done it for the wrong reasons?
My path here wasn't fast or tidy. I went from chasing stages with the wrong motive, to recognizing it clearly, to giving it up, to a quiet season, to God resurrecting the calling, to eventually arriving at a place where the question was actually different. And that shift in the question, from 'how do I make this happen for me' to 'what does it mean to do this for you,' was the thing that had to change.
Giving it up was actually easier than I expected. Once I recognized my heart was wrong, it was humbling enough that the ambition deflated. I didn't deserve it, I couldn't have handled it, I wasn't the right person. I stopped looking for stages, sought simplicity and privacy, and let the dream stay buried. That was a necessary corrective. But it wasn't the final position.
The song Center by Bethel Music became the anchor: my whole life for your glory, my whole world for you only, everything for the honor of your name. If my days tell a story, let it be of you only. I heard it for the first time at church after the Alaska move. It became a filter I run decisions through: does this tell a story of him, or a story of me?
The practical proof that the motive has shifted: this entire idols series. Sharing every way I've failed to put God first publicly is the opposite of building my own platform. It's uncomfortable. I can't wait for it to be over. That discomfort is the evidence.
How do you integrate faith and ambition in business without keeping them in separate boxes?
I describe living with two separate selves for most of my career: the business world version of me, and the hungry-for-Jesus version. I knew how to be professional. I knew how to talk about frameworks, processes, hiring, strategy. And separately, I knew how to be raw and desperate for God. I didn't know how to be both at the same time in all contexts.
What God was pushing me toward was not a better integration strategy. It was stopping the performance. The two-boxes problem wasn't about finding a polished way to combine faith and professional content. It was about recognizing that the separation itself was the fraud. My faith wasn't a separate category from my work. It was the root of my work.
The practical move was to stop trying to make it business-safe. God's specific challenge to me: don't share the business version of the story and keep the messy parts separate. Share the whole story. The good, the bad, the ugly, the spiritual, the processes, the mistakes, all of it together, because they're all connected.
Resources mentioned
- Ep 26 — The Idol of Pride — Previous episode: when achievements build a wall instead of a foundation
- Ep 28 — The Idol of Money — Next in the series: putting hope in income instead of God
- Free Hiring Resources
Full transcript
In today's episode, we're continuing on in this series on idols in entrepreneurship and in business. And today we're looking at the idol of ambition, the idol of our achievements. An idol is an object or a concept that we give a higher priority than God. It's anything we rely on for blessing, help, or guidance instead of God. It's anything that consumes our heart, imagination, or devotion more than God. It's any good thing that we give more influence, more power, more prominence in our life over God.
And the question ends up being: where is our hope? Is our hope in God? Or in this case, is it in what we're trying to accomplish? For this idol specifically, for me, it is more of a motive of the heart, not necessarily what I'm putting first, but why. It's putting my own ambition first before God. And this, once again, these are just real life stories of how these idols have shown up in my life, the way that I've wrestled with them, the things I've learned along the way, and what God has been teaching me about myself and about him and about faith through the process.
With this ambition idol, honestly, from a young age I didn't know what I wanted to do growing up. I didn't know what my career path looked like. But I know in my heart, I always wanted to be significant. I always wanted to deliver value. I wanted to be valued. I wanted to do something that mattered. And early on in my career, I had this dream of speaking, of being a speaker, of presenting on stages, of sharing. What specifically, I had no idea. I just knew that I felt called to do that.
And so I shared a little bit about this journey in the episode where we talk about the idol of control. My control was having this vision, having this dream, and then trying to make it happen in my own timeline, in my own way, opening my own doors. But this ambition thing is more along the lines of why I was doing that, or what I was seeking in the process. And so when I started out, when I was trying to make all these things happen, when I was seeking this success and this ambition and these stages, I was doing it for me. I was doing it to prove myself, to prove to myself that I could do it. But I was seeking status. I was seeking popularity. I was seeking fame. And I was doing it for all the wrong reasons. I was doing it for my own identity, for my own sense of worth, just for my own glory, honestly.
And I didn't recognize that at the time, that it was just really all about me. And I was in a season of my life where I was learning and growing in God and in the word. And I was trying to balance this desire to be successful, this desire to achieve, this desire to be someone, with faith, with what God was teaching me, with God's place in my life. And my heart was not in the right place at that time. But at that time, when I was seeking all of these things and trying to make all these things happen and steamrolling ahead and steamrolling over people, it was all about me. There was this selfishness, this want to be the most important person in the room.
And God had to break that in me, because I wasn't doing it for him. I wasn't doing it to point people to Jesus. I wasn't doing it for his glory or his honor. I wasn't doing it to make a difference. I wasn't doing it because I loved people. I wish I could say that's what it was, but it wasn't. Like it's just this blunt, ugly truth of me trying to just make things happen for all the wrong reasons. And I didn't make things happen, not then, not that way. God was like, nope. I'm going to change your heart first. I'm going to work on you as a person first. And so he did.
And that process took quite a few years. It's still a work in progress, but a lot has changed in the last ten years, in the last five years. And during that time, I did finally get to a point where I recognized that my heart was completely wrong, that I was wanting success for all the wrong reasons. It wasn't about love or generosity or serving or pointing people to Jesus. It was just about me. And I finally saw that. And at the same time, I also recognized that I was not a person to lead. My heart was not in a good place. I was not someone who should be telling or sharing with other people a good way, because I personally hadn't found a good way. I personally hadn't implemented a good way. And when I recognized that, that was super humbling to be like, okay, I need to figure out my life first. I need to figure out my heart first, my marriage first, my parenting first.
And so I started going through that process, going from wanting fame, wanting success, wanting stages, to laying it down, to giving it up. I just recognized that I wasn't ready for that and my heart was not in the right place. And so it was easy to give it up. It wasn't hard. It was truly humbling to wake up and realize: I don't deserve this at all. What am I doing? I couldn't even handle it even if I wanted to. And so I gave it up, I surrendered it, and I sought the quiet. I sought privacy. I sought just a small, quiet, simple life. I stopped looking for opportunities to speak, and I just focused on living my life and being a good mom and being a good wife. And my life, it got better. There was fruit that came out of that, and it was really great.
And then it was just like, okay, I don't want anything to threaten it. I don't want anything else to stand in the way. And I don't want to ever risk wanting those things for the wrong reasons again. So it's easier to just let it stay dead and buried. Because dealing with that again is uncomfortable. Dealing with that again is going to bring up things I don't want to face. And for a while, that was an okay attitude to have. But that's when I started to realize that I was fighting against something that God really had given me. And when God gives us a dream or he gives us a calling, he's going to make a way. He's going to work in our hearts and prepare us and shape us into the person we need to be. We'll step into it when we're ready. He will open doors when we're ready. He will resurrect it when we're ready.
And I ended up resisting that for a while, fighting that for a while. And even after I finally surrendered, and even after he finally brought it to the surface, guess what? It was uncomfortable. It was difficult. There were things in my life I had to check and to wrestle with and to address: what am I doing it and why am I doing it? And anytime he calls us into something bigger than ourselves, it requires him. We need him. So I went through this new wrestling period of like, okay, I'm going to pursue this dream again, but I'm going to try and do it with the right heart. And now I actually have to learn how to do that.
Through most of my career, I wrestled with this idea of being a professional and being a Christian. I felt like there were these two very different sides to me. There was this business world version of Amy, and then there was this like hungry, desperate for Jesus version of Amy. And I didn't know how to be both in all situations. I didn't know how to intertwine those sides of myself regardless of what situation I was in. And that always bothered me. I wanted to incorporate faith into my work, into my message, because it was a part of who I am. It was a part of what I believed. It's a part of how I just live my life.
And so I didn't want to ignore that side of it. I didn't want to talk about ideas or processes or frameworks or people or gifting without acknowledging and giving credit to the creator, to the one who knit us together, the one who made us beautiful and wonderful and complex, the one who has a plan and a purpose for our life. I couldn't just continue to pretend that wasn't a huge part of it. And so through this process of this dream resurrecting itself again and God prompting me to start sharing my story, once again I started to try and share the story without actually sharing the story, keeping it business-like, keeping it in a nice neat box.
And that's where God was challenging me and saying: no, that's not what I'm asking you to do. I'm asking you to just share the story, for everything that it is, the good, the bad, the ugly, the spiritual, the processes, the people, the message, just all of the elements, because they're all connected and they're all intertwined. And then also coming to this place where I was really being challenged in why am I doing this? So once again, everything is kind of being called into question. All the things that I stand for. And God's really challenging me to be like, okay, why are you doing this? Why are you building this business? Is it for you or is it for me?
And this time I was like, okay, no. I want to do this for you. I want to point to you. I want to make sure that you are the one that this is all about. And there's a song called Center by Bethel Music. And there's a bridge in the song, and it says: my whole life for your glory, my whole world for you only, everything for the honor of your name. If my days tell a story, let it be of you only, everything for the honor of your name. And I heard that song for the first time when we moved to Alaska, and we were at church, and the song came up, and I saw the lyrics on the screen. And that song has just been like an anthem for me of like, what does that mean? What does that look like? If my days tell a story, let it be of you only, everything for the honor of your name.
And what does that look like in my life and in my business today, in what I'm doing, and what I feel like God's asking me to do, to let everything that I do tell a story of him only. Like that it's not about me, it's not about my ambition, it's not about what I'm trying to accomplish. If anything, doing a whole series on idols and just sharing all the ways that I've not put God first, that's not fun. That's not easy. That's honestly been super uncomfortable and I can't wait for the series to be over.
But if God asks me to, like, am I willing to just lay it all out there? And I think about King David when he danced before the Lord and his wife was like, you're undignified. And David says: I'm willing to look even more undignified than this. I am willing to look even more foolish for the glory of God. And I think about my pride and my ambition and my image. And it's like I have to be willing to lay that down. I have to be willing to let that go. It has to be about him. And so those things have terrified me. Those things have held me back my whole life because I've been afraid of what people think. I've been afraid of approval. I've been prideful. I've cared so much about me and myself and my reputation. And so I haven't shared my faith, I haven't shared my story, I haven't shared these ugly moments, out of fear, out of my own self-preservation.
And going through this series and going through this last year, God has just been challenging every single part of that to be like, are you willing to look foolish? Are you willing to admit that you've messed up? Are you willing to share your pain? Are you willing to lay it out there for me, for my glory, to point back to me every time? And that's been wrecking me. And it makes me just have to need him. And then sometimes even feel so vulnerable and so raw that I just want to run and hide. But that's like the shift in my heart over the years: just shifting away from my own ambition, my own image, my own success, it being about me and my life and how people see me. And instead: God, my life is yours, my business is yours, my days are yours, my message is yours. Show me what to do, tell me what to do, help me to obey, help me to have faith, and help me to just lay it all down. So just to wrap it up, if this resonated with you, pass it on to a friend, or even consider leaving a rating so others can find it too. As always, you can learn more at clearauthenticbrands.com. That's all for this episode. See you next time.