Putting God First

My life completely changed when I decided to submit my mess to God. When I chose to focus on Him, it opened up my mind that I had a purpose. My life was worthy of something. It proved to be the only thing that filled my heart with contentment.

Our lives are driven by needs -Physical, material, emotional, as social. It ranges from the simple and tangible like food and clothing, to the intangible needs of love and recognition.

Some are crucial to our survival and well-being others are just good to have. Sadly sometimes are can’t tell if they need or want. Yet, we pour our time and effort, and even our lives into pursuing them.

We don’t always know what we need and even when we do, we may not know if they are really important.

Some work hard to earn a living and lose their health in the process, while others neglect their family while striving to build careers.

With so many different needs demanding our attention, it’s sometimes difficult to make the right choices and live our lives well.

It’s like packing for a trip. We wish we could bring all the things we need, but we know we cannot. We have to decide what to bring and what to leave behind. We have a list of things to bring, but we have to pack them.

I’m sure we’ve went on a trip only to realize we left something important behind. Or the other way around, we went on a trip and packed something we didn’t use at all.

We need wisdom to know what is important and necessary. If life’s journey comes with a suitcase, what are you going to put inside?

What things will you bring along on this journey that would ensure that you have a good and happy life? Will there be some things that you can leave out because they are trivial and you can do without?

These are some tough questions. But we need to figure them out. We don’t want to end up regretting the choices we’ve made, and not paid more attention to the important things.

Jesus taught that making the right choices means prioritizing spiritual things over material ones, accepting a life of difficult, narrow paths over the easy ones, and living a life that is both righteous and selfless. Jesus contrasts a “wide gate” and “broad way” that leads to destruction with a “narrow gate” and constricted way” that leads to life, saying the latter is followed by few people.

The right choices are not always easy and true spiritual life may involve hardship and difficulty.

In Matthew 6:33 Jesus suggests, “But seek first God’s Kingdom, and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you are well.”

This means putting spiritual priorities ahead of material desires, should come first, if we focus on the physical too much we can cast a shadow of darkness over our life.

God is very wise, He knows our problems, what we are worried about, and if we put Him first all the other things will come.

Jesus linked the two to remind us that God is our ultimate provider. It is not our hard work and good plan that gets us into heaven. We need to have the right perspective. He is the only One who can truly provide what we need.

When we focus on God and His kingdom, all things will be given to us, but when we focus on going after our material needs, then we will end up with frustration and worry.

If we are busy in our lives with things that are only our wants, we are going to be merely going for existence. That’s not what God put us here for.

If we are made for a purpose of only existing we will never be content. It would be like a car with its engine running but no driver. Itburns up the fuel, but goes nowhere and over time the car goes dead.

Life without God is just like that. We use up all our energy, over time, our money, our energy, our time, our health, and over time, we drain our life away. Only to find out that we have gone nowhere and achieved nothing.