“You shall have no other gods before or besides Me.” Exodus 20. 3
I did not place this power thought last-on our list because it is less important, for truly it is the most important. I placed it here because I wanted to leave you with what I consider to be the most Vital thing in our lives and that is simply putting God first in everything. We should put Him first in all of our thoughts, words, and decisions. The Bible says that God is a jealous god. That means<He is not willing to be second place in any area of our lives. He loves us and wants us to have the very best life possible. He knows for that to happen we must keep Him and His instructions to us as our number one priority at all times. I think the following Scripture says it all:
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. [For all things originate with Him and come from Him; all things live through Him, and all things center in and tend to consummate and to end in Him.] To Him be glory forever! Amen (so be it). (Romans 11.36)
I love to meditate on that verse because it helps bring me back to the reality that life is all about God. When our lives here end all that remains is God and that is a sobering thought for anyone to ponder. The Earth and the things in it will vanish. They will simply disappear and we will all stand before God and give an account of our lives (see Romans 14:12). I believe each of us should be careful how we live and learn to keep God first in all things.
Everything God asks us to do is for our good. All of His instructions to us are intended to show us the way to righteousness, peace, and joy. jesus didn’t die for us so we can have a religion, but so we might have a deep and intimate personal relationship with God through Him. He wants us to live with, through, and for Him. He created us for fellowship with Him. It is a tragedy for peopleto live and ignore God unless they have some sort of emergency that they ask Him to help with. In Jeremiah, He said that His people had forgotten Him for days without number and that is sad indeed (see Jeremiah 2:32). Since God is everything how can we forget
Him?
Sadly, most people waste a lot of their life, if not all of it, before they realize that having a right relationship with God is the most important thing in all of life. The world struggles to find peace and joy in all the wrong places and the truth is that He (God) is our peace and our joy. He is also everything else that anyone truly needs. God delights in providing for and helping us but He refuses to be treated as a type of spiritual Santa Claus. That is, someone we go to only when we need or want something.
God said that we are to have no other gods before Him. What do you worship? What do you place first in your life? What do you think about, talk about, and spend the most time doing? If We are honest with ourselves, it doesn’t take long to locate what or who is number one in our life. We tend to be self-serving, and our number one goal is usually getting what we want. The thing many people fail to realize is that they can never be fulfilled or have the satisfaction they desire apart from God. He created us for His pleasure and delight. He did give us free will so we can choose or reject Him because He has no delight in a heart that does not serve out of
choice. He gives us life as a gift and if we will freely offer it back to Him, then and only then we can live it fully and joyfully. However,
if we try to keep our life for ourselves, we will lose it. We may live out many years but they will be frustrating, unhappy ones.
I recently realized that it is quite possible to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and yet never give ourselves to Him. We want Him and what He offers, but we are reluctant to give ourselves to Him for His use and will. We are to live dedicated, consecrated lives in which God and His will are our number one priority. Anyone who does not do that will never be truly content and satisfied.
People frequently ask me how I keep my priorities straight. The answer is that I must continually straighten them out. Like mOst things in life, just because our priorities are straight today doesn’t mean they’re going to stay that way. In our. buSy lives we have many things screaming for our time and attention and I realize it is easy to get off track. But we can daily re-establish what our priorities will be. We can daily look at our lives and make sure we are fruitful andnot just busy doing things that take time and end up drawing us further and further away from God. We can develop spiritual disciplines in our life that will help us keep God as the center of all that we do. Bible reading and study, prayer, silence and solitude, serving, giving, and many other things should be practiced regularly.
So brothers and sisters you have to put God first in your life God bless you.
