"Let God Be First"

“Let God be First”

Matt. 6:33 & Col. 3:24

Matthew 6:33 says “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

Let God be First. We as a people have not taken this statement to heart. We have pushed God so far back in the operating procedures of life that it’s almost as if he’s not there at all. As a result we find in our society today that sin is running a full course. We have right being called wrong and wrong being called right. We have kids carrying guns to school, mothers drowning all their kids, fathers killing their entire families, kids killing their parents, terrorist attacking America. Road rage is a constant threat. People trying to play god trying to clone humans and create a super race of people. Homosexuality is ever increasing, you can’t even turn on your television sets anymore without seeing some form of it on TV. Every diabolical thing the world has, has crept its way into the church. We have men and women of God, who called them selves preachers of the gospel, marrying men to men and women to women, hiding behind the premises that you never know who you’ll fall in love with just so they can have the numbers. The moral and ethical standards that this country was built upon has become obsolete. The statement and belief of being One Nation Under God, that at one time was recited by every child in school, has now become a punishable crime to even mention. Man has taken the law a twisted in such a way that its now lawful to be wrong and unlawful to be right. The reason is we have failed to Let God be First.

Let God be First is a declarative statement that we all agree with, we say amen to it, and we advice people of doing it. We teach it and we preach it, but do we really understand what it means to “Let God be First.”

The dictionary says:

Þ Let: To allow, to permit, to acknowledge, to afford the opportunity.

Þ Be: Exist, be present, to be real, and alive.

Þ First: To be head of, the original, to be before all, in preference to something else, the beginning, foremost.

Although God is God the creator of all that is and all power in Heaven and Earth is in His hands, realize that he will never forcefully acquire the position of being first, even though he requires it. He said in Exodus 20:3 the very first commandment “Thou shall have no other gods before me.” His requirement is to be first, but he will not force his way in the position of being first upon us; therefore the ability, responsibility, and capability of God being first lies within each and every one of us.

The problem we have in letting God be First is we are wrapped up, tide up, and tangled up in this flesh and Paul lets us know in Romans 7:18 “For I know that in me (that is in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing.”

The flesh is not subject to God, the flesh is under control of the mind. If the mind wants something it tells the flesh wouldn’t it be nice to have that, the flesh now gets the desire for it. That’s why the Bible says “Let the same mind that is in Christ Jesus be also in you”, because Jesus’s mind was to do the will of his father and his flesh was in subjection to his mind.

Since we have not brought this flesh under subjection we allow the desire, the wants, and the ambitions of the flesh to give its’ first allegiance to everything else but God.

Þ Our nature and tendency is to indulge this flesh, to allow our profession, our social acceptance, our livelihood, our comforts, and our pleasures the opportunity to be satisfied. We spend so much time trying to ensure that we meet the right people, drive the right car, wear the right clothes, attend the right social functions, impress the right people, operate in the proper arenas so that the social elite of this world might take notice of us. We diligently and meticulously strive for popularity and prosperity because human conception is based on the belief that this is what it takes to be blessed and we confuse resource with the source. So what happens is we spend all of our energy trying to reach unattainable expectations all that this flesh may be satisfied and what little we have left we then offer unto God if our flesh isn’t to tired.

We must realize is that the flesh will never be satisfied, and no matter what we have or achieve, no matter who knows your name, no matter how much success you get that you will never be truly blessed until you “Let God be First.”