Is God your Number One?
Deuteronomy 6:5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
This is something that gets lip service in sermons and I have seen it exampled by some, but it deserves a lot more attention. Can you say that God is number one in your life? Is He alone worthy of your praise? Do you love your God more than you love your wife and family? Does God ask us to put Him above everything else in our life? Is that selfish of Him?
This is a tough one, it really is. I don’t claim to have all the answers, and I know I fail to put God first in my life at times. But I do believe that it is right to do so. I believe God expects this of us for our own good. First let us examine what can happen when we do not put God first;
A wife devotes herself to her childen so completely that her husband feels neglected. The marriage fails and the children she wanted to give everything suffer big time.
A husband devotes himself to his career to the point that he is unable to give proper attention to his wife and kids. Again the marriage fails and everyone pays the price.
A man is devoted to a certain cause of justice or charity. It is all he speaks about. Friends who have other priorities start falling by the wayside. He finds himself all alone in his quest.
I could go on and on, but you see what I am getting at. Life is about priorities. Here are some of the priorities that we must juggle with in life aside from God; spouse/partner, children, family, friends, charity, leisure, justice, politics, environment, equality, etc. There are many more things we must deal with on a day to day basis and these don’t even touch on the whole career, money and trying to provide for our family thing. It is no wonder that people are stressed and confused. How do we deal with all of this? And now you tell me we should put God first?
Yes! Emphatically I say yes! Putting God first is the best way to handle all of these other priorities in life. I have found that I am one of the worst for zoning on on one thing in my life, allowing all other things to suffer. Maybe you are good at setting priorities and managing your life, but even so, putting God first in all things can only help.
What does “putting God first” mean? Does that mean that we must talk about God all day long? Do we have to pray so much we wear holes in our jeans before they need a washing? Do we have to stop and research every decision we make? No. Putting God as number one does not relieve us of our other worldly priorites. Going to an extreme on this is not healthy either, except in the case of a sabbatical or a time of mourning.
Here are my thoughts on this;
(1) There should be (at the least) a time of prayer and preparation at the start of each day, and a time of reflection near the end. This may be short or long depending on what is going on in your life, but it is a great practice to get into.
(2) Once a week (at the least) we should set a time to study His word and spend some personal time with God in prayer or meditation. You may not be into meditation, but at least there should be nothing distracting you. If others are watching TV, ask them to turn it down, go into a room and close the door.
(3) In all our personal time with God we should recogize His importance. The prayer Jesus gave us starts out this way; Our father, who art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Recognizing God as most important in our lives should be the start of all prayer, but we do not stop at that;
(4) Loving and worshipping God is not just something we say. Our praise must result in action. We can say we love God all we want, but if we do not love and serve others we miss the whole point of life here on earth. Reading His word and praying should result in a knowledge of what God wants us to do with our life. We are here for a reason. The Bible and the Holy Spirit are tools to help us discover that purpose. If you are not sure what that is yet, do something and continue to ask for guidance. Believe that He will show you what you are to do.
Putting God first does not mean we love our wife or husband any less. It does not mean we do our job with any less effort. It does not mean that we serve and love our neighbor any less. In fact, we will be able to do all these things with more love and effort. God is the source of all love and the more we go to Him to receive His love, the more we will be able to love others as we should. The more we read His book of life instructions, the more we will be able to keep our priorities in life.
Yes, God does require that we put Him above everything else here on earth. You may say that is selfish of Him, but I do not believe that. I believe He asks this of us because He loves us more than all of creation. He put so much love and care into His creation; what a wonder it is! Yet He loves us so much He sacrificed His only Son that we might be with Him always.
Praise be to God and to God alone!
Psalm 62:1 My soul finds rest in God alone
Tags: Christianity, Church Criticism
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November 12, 2007 at 2:24 am
You got me thinking, and I should spend more time with the bible. Instead of watching t.v. But I do read a chapter in book of todays author. Not every day I read it.
November 13, 2007 at 4:29 am
Hey Jim! Thanks.
Sorry that your comment did not appear right away. I will try to fix it so that next time it will work right.
November 18, 2007 at 7:45 am
A wife devotes herself to her childen so completely that her husband feels neglected. The marriage fails and the children she wanted to give everything suffer big time.
A husband devotes himself to his career to the point that he is unable to give proper attention to his wife and kids. Again the marriage fails and everyone pays the price.
A man is devoted to a certain cause of justice or charity. It is all he speaks about. Friends who have other priorities start falling by the wayside. He finds himself all alone in his quest.
In life there always has to be balance. Putting God above everything else just skews the balance a different way. As I posted on Jason’s blog, Torah teaches us first to love our neighbor, next to love the stranger and only afterwards are we told to love God. In loving the people around us we are in reality loving God. The fact that we can’t figure out how to balance those loves in our life does not mean we need to relegate them all to some lower level.
A pastor gets up and talks about his great devotion to God. He spends all his time working to spread that gospel. The pastor’s son calls him on the phone at church one day, “Dad, I need you.” The father says not now, I’m in the middle of the most powerful gospel message I’ve ever written. The son later tells his father that this was the day he stopped believing in God and what caused him to walk out the door wanting nothing to do with God or religion ever after. The pastor brags about this and says he knows his son will eventually realize the father was right, that God must come first.
I heard this from a pulpit. My first thought? What an ass. Can you imagine this being your father? Yet what you endorse here is exactly his mentality!
Let me give you another story. A young man with autism is starting at a new school, he becomes confused about what bus he should take home from school and doesn’t know what to do. He calls his mother from his cell phone but she is sleeping and doesn’t hear it ringing. He tries a few more times and then calls his rabbi. It is just prior to the High Holy Days when rabbis are trying to get a million things done all at once. Yet the rabbi stops what he is doing, drives to the school and gives the boy a ride home. When thanked by the mother for doing this, he blows it off. God forbid I should not respond to a call for help because I’m too busy with God.
I know this story is true because I’m the mother, the kid is my son, and the rabbi is my rabbi. I also know that my son can better understand the bigger picture of trusting God because he knows when he is in trouble he can trust his rabbi. (If you’re wondering, Rabbi himself programmed his cell phone number into my son’s cell phone so that he is always just a phone call away.)
So, which do you think is more important? Putting God first or being God first? Torah points to the second. My son didn’t need a rabbi who was so devoted to God he couldn’t be God for my son. Nor do any of the rest of us.
November 18, 2007 at 8:12 am
You bring up good points for living a meaningful life but I would change the order because as you have already seen, I put the people part first, the God part second since Torah does the same. As I pointed out from Micah 6:8 What does God require of us? Does it say put God first? No, it says do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. People first, God after.
1) Justice, justice shall you pursue. Take care of your world and the people around you. Fight oppression, take up the cause of the widow, the orphan, the stranger. Be God in their world when God seems far away.
2) Be merciful. Don’t live life saying I have the right to do this. Instead live by what is hateful to you do not do to others or the flip side do to others what you would have them do to you. No one needs to even understand God to be able to follow these rules. We all know what we like and don’t like. Use this guide in making decisions. Be God to the world around you.
3) Walk humbly with God. This is where the rest of your points come into play.
A) Daily prayers. Traditional Jews pray three times a day, morning, afternoon, and evening. These are fixed prayers, the morning takes about 30-45 minutes, the afternoon about 10 and the evening about 20. We pray as a community as much as possible, I pray morning prayers with a minyan, the rest I do at home or work. These fixed prayers are praise to God, prayers for the community, and include passages from Psalms, from Torah and even poems. Many Christians are disinclined to go with fixed prayers but I would ask them to write down their own a few times and see how repetitious and meaningless their own efforts are, how self-centered they own efforts are. Why not pray the Psalms for awhile instead? Why not pray the words of others who speak the words you would say if only you could articulate them yourself? Prayer is a beautiful thing, but I’ve heard it mangled and turned into a totally boring monologue, even as my prayers are maligned as being ‘vain repetitions’ which they aren’t.
B) Torah study is to be a daily thing, not weekly. Weekly is too infrequent for it to stick. It doesn’t mean you can’t do a very intense weekly study, but taking 30 minutes a day isn’t going to kill most of us. Study should include more than just the texts themselves. Commentaries, books, researching from a variety of sources, all can add great meaning to your studies. Study from sources which take a different point of view. Challenge yourself with why you don’t hold to that view and don’t let yourself off with easy answers like they’re wrong. Take their view seriously and take your response the same. They may help you see something you’ve missed before, not to make you think like them but to give you a different take on something or even to confirm your own POV.
So, we agree on some things, we’ll never agree on priorities, but….I think we already knew that! If we agreed on everything you would be a Jew. :>)
November 18, 2007 at 11:13 pm
Yael, thanks for your comments, I will respond later as I don’t have time right now.
November 19, 2007 at 3:08 am
Hi Ken,
I’ll be off the blog routine for awhile. Just found out my father died today.
November 19, 2007 at 4:05 am
So sorry to hear that Yael. Thanks for your comments.
November 19, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Yael, I will post a quick reply to your comments but I do not expect that you will respond. I imagine for the next few weeks you will be quite busy and your thoughts will be elsewhere.
“In life there always has to be balance. Putting God above everything else just skews the balance a different way.” (Yael)
Balance is also what I promote, but I see God as someone that is there to help me keep that balance. You make an excellent point in the two examples you give, but many people I know say they believe in God and yet only give Him an hour or two of time a week. The rest of the time they go about life without any thought of God.
Many (I am not saying you are like this) view lif as a sequence of events and God is to be slotted in where time permits. I view life as a wagon wheel with God at the center. At the outer rim are all of my priorities. I relate to each of them with respect to how I understand God. I love each person in my life and do the best I can for them. I would certainly drop whatever I am doing with God to answer the request for attention from my family because I know God will always be there and He understands my other priorities as He gave them to me. But no matter who I am giving my attention to I will also be thinking on God. No matter how well or poor my life is going, I will reflect upon God and His ways. Yes, I will praise my wife and family and friends but I will praise my God in all things.
Maybe you just have a different way of expressing the same thought, but I do think that you too are guided in all you do by your understanding of God?