Putting God First Series

Putting God First

Grant van Boeschoten

January 11, 2008

2 Corinthians 5:17 (NLT)

What this means is that those who become Christians become new persons. They are not the same anymore, for the old life is gone. A new life has begun!

God wants to do a new thing in your life. He is the God of New Beginnings, the God of forgiveness and the God of a fresh start for life. When you make God the Lord of your life, he forgives your past and sets you up for a life of purpose and promise. You get saved, you are made whole and you are given the gift of the Holy Spirit.

God does not take his relationship with us lightly though. The words that we say, the actions that we take, even the motives that go into our words and actions, these are all things that God takes notice of.

Deuteronomy 6 can be described as a portion of scripture that compels us to wholehearted commitment in God. It is about loving God with all of your heart, your soul and your mind, and it gives example after example of how the Israelites were to lived whole heartedly after God.

Deuteronomy 6:15 (NLT)

…for the LORD your God, who lives among you, is a jealous God.

You see, God loves us so much that he doesn’t want us to love anyone else more than him.

It’s kind of like how wives love there husbands so much that they don’t him to love anyone else more than her.

What kind of a marriage relationship would you have if there wasn’t a healthy level of jealousy between man and wife. Wouldn’t it be strange and damaging if there was an apathy in this area. Isn’t the standard that husband and wife love each other more than anyone else?

In fact, if there was a marriage without this level of jealousy in it, we would think that it was lacking. And so it is with God.

Our relationship with him is lacking when we don’t understand that he is a jealous God, and he wants our best affection, our best praises, our best gifts, and the best part of ourselves to be given to him in love. It is simply the foundation to a good relationship with God, anything less would be lacking.

Today I want to challenge everyone to put God first in your life. And specifically I am going to lay out 3 different areas where I believe that every single God fearing person needs to put God first. Your time, your resources and your decisions.

1. Your Time

I have learned through 4 and half years of marriage that one way to tell your wife that she is very important to you is to spend quality time with her. I have also found that the time of the day matters when you spend this quality time. It’s going to be a little bit different for everyone, but for me if we can spend a good amount of time between 9:30 and 10:30 at night, where I am just focused on Brenna, then it is a good thing. And the truth is that I don’t do that enough.

The truth is that the way we spend our time says a lot about what we value in life. God wants us to value his relationship with him, and we need to show God this through the quality time that we spend with him.

I have found that if I will give God the first part of my day, that his presence will remain with me in a real way throughout the rest of the day. If I can get up early enough to read my bible and go for a prayer walk then I communicate with my time how valuable God is to me. And I believe that it strengthens my relationship with God.

Manytimes we think of our relationship with God as something that will take care of itself, or as something that God will take care of for us. There are even some elements of truth to those thoughts.

Revelations 3:20 (NLT)

"Look! Here I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends.

Jesus is standing at the door asking to have a meal. Just think about it, if you are about to sit down to dinner, and you here some knocking at your door and you go to answer it and there is your friend, just standing there asking to come in for a meal, it is going to do something to your relationship.

Jesus is the one who is taking the initiative to spend time with you. He is the one who is already at the door to your life, asking for some time just to visit with you. All that you have to do is open the door.