Keep God First in Your Life

 

 

Matthew 6:30-33 The Message(MSG)

30-33 “If God gives such attention to the appearance of wildflowers—most of which are never even seen—don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you? What I’m trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don’t worry about missing out. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met.Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”

We can learn a tremendous from the record of Adam and Eve in God’s Word. One of the most important lessons is about the kind of relationship that God desires with people. It is a relationship based on mutual respect. He is our Creator, and it is crucial that we understand that the creation cannot be greater than the Creator. God is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. He has all power in His hands, and He is sovereign. He’s the Ruler of everything, and everything in the entire universe belongs to Him. He is the One that created the earth and then furnished it with all good things so that all our needs would be met. He did this even before He created human beings. So, the order He has established is that He provides and we enjoy His provision.

He set everything up this way because He is love and He loves us. He has also shown us through Adam and Eve that He will not force us to love Him back. They decided that they no longer wanted to be under God’s sovereignty, but wanted to be independent of it. They disobeyed Him, turned their backs on His love, and chose to do their own thing. Most human beings are still doing this. They turn their backs on God’s Word, will not follow it, and refuse to have faith in our Creator.

When people make this decision, they are not walking in love. 1John 4:16(NLT) tells us, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them.” God is love. It is not only who He is, it is what He does. It is impossible to love truly if we refuse to love through Him. 1John 4:8(NLT) says, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Knowing God, understanding what pleases Him and understanding who He is, this is how we learn to love. He commands us to love through Him by following the example of Jesus Christ, because through his life, ministry, and sacrifice, Jesus Christ demonstrated the love of God.

In Mark 12:30. Jesus Christ commanded us to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. We are to love God with all that we are, and loving others is birthed out of our love for Heavenly Father. As women, we must be very cautious and guard our hearts, because many of us put our love for the men in our lives above our love for God through Jesus Christ. Many of us are not concerned with doing God’s Will, but instead, we become slaves to our affection for the other person. This isn’t God’s love. It is obsession, and obsession is based on fear.

Any time that we depend on a person or thing more than God, we are walking away from love’s path. And many of us think that when we are doing this, we are doing the right thing. It’s not what pleases God, and if it doesn’t please Him, it’s not right. Our faith in Him pleases God, and obedience to His Word is the action that backs up our faith. Our Heavenly Father told His people in Deuteronomy 30:20(NLT), “You can make this choice by loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the LORD, you will live long in the land the LORD swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Many of us are selfless caretakers of all those we love and care for. Whether it’s our children, parents, siblings or spouse, we desire to nurture them, but this doesn’t mean that we make them our world. I’ve heard some of the strongest and fiercest women of God declare they’d never depend on a man for their happiness. Then something happens and they discover they’ve done exactly that. They’ve made the man the center of their universe and the object of all their happiness.

Only God is worthy to be our ‘everything’. He alone is worthy to be our world. Everything we have comes from Him, and we should never make the mistake of putting His gifts before our appreciation for all that He is. Our relationships can go horribly wrong when our focus veers away from loving God the way He requires. Loving Him through Jesus Christ is what gives us strength, confidence, and endurance. This is fuel for all our relationships. So when and if we’ve discovered that we let our love and devotion to God slip to second place, we need to seek His forgiveness and renew our commitment to keep Him first in all we do. ■

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV) is adapted from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.

“Keep God First in Your Life”, written by Kim for https://rescuefromdomesticviolence.blogspot.com© 2021. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior