Wednesday, November 26, 2008

How do we "Put God First"?

There was a time, when I thought that most people in Church put God first. I thought this because, in Church we often talked about putting God first, sang about putting God first and we set apart our Sundays to come to Church to worship God because we put God first.

But it came into my heart one day, what it means at the very least, to "Put God First'.

It is no easy task to put God first. While we cannot use time as a measure of high or low priorities, I considered this -->

1. During the weekdays, we can spend 40 full-on hours working for an earthly boss, who we probably don't even like, and whose organizational goal we probably don't even support, yet we can't even spend 1 full-on hour in the presence of God - a God whom we love, a God whose goal we are sold to, and a God who understands better how to pay salary, than any other boss in the world.

2. In our company, we can hold 3 high-level meetings a week to discuss progress and direction (neither of which we should care personally very much about - with exceptions), yet as for our service to God, we can't even hold one prayer meeting a month to pray, discuss and share our progress and direction.

~~~
I closed my eyes, and I saw somebody in front of me. He said to me in response to the previous statement about meeting irregularly as opposed to regularly:

"Well that's because there's nothing to meet about...[Pause] We don't do anything during the week."
And I said to him. "Exactly, and why is that?"
~~~

Such is how we serve God sometimes. At times, it seems like our priority in life is all of these first: education/career, finances, social life, personal development + investment, relationships with family + loved ones, while all of these second: relationship with God, services to God.

At times, it seems like we have to find time to fit God into our busy schedules that revolve around us; it seems like God is only significant enough in our lives to receive our leftovers.

You know it really should be the opposite. That is: fitting our personal agendas around our big GOD*^. I know it sounds like a real bizarre idea, but why not let God show you how it should be done.

A few things are for sure - there is a mindset to break, we need God's Rema revelation to break this mindset, and we ought to place a much higher priority on chasing the things of God (yes that's right, the things of God) and doing His work effectively at least as effective as what we do for our earthly boss**.

** who doesn't love us, whom we don't even like, and who has no idea about paying workers real wages.
*^ topic for another time