Putting God First!

Hello Guys and Gals!

What I am about to talk about is very hard. It is hard because it involves something in my past that caused me to both become a very bad person and eventually draw closer to God!

Over 20 years ago, I was in love with a woman. She was everything to me. She was the one who helped me come to the understanding of my need for Salvation and it was because of her efforts along with many others why I accepted Jesus into my heart!

This woman was older than I and we had one of them relationships in which we both could tell what the other was thinking or feeling, even if we were miles away. When we were spending time apart so that we could figure all of this out, I found out she was engaged to marry another man. I went to see her. I asked her how she could marry this guy. She told me that she loved me more than she did him. She said that when she was with me all she could think about was me and she could not put God first in her life. She said that she was marrying him because with him, she knew she would be able to put God first and that she knew the necessity of that need and that is why she was marrying him.

Years later, I was with a friend of mine working in his garage in the evening. Suddenly I could not think of anything but her! I guess I got real quiet because my friend asked me what was wrong. I told him that I couldn't stop thinking about her. Him knowing my past with her of course. He told me that whatever the reason, I would find out eventually why I was thinking about her.

The next day, I went to the grocery store. I got out of my car and stepped up onto the curb and literally bumped into her. We visited shortly and I found out that her plane had landed the night before at the same time I started thinking about her. Such was my relationship with this woman that whenever she is near, I still know it! To this day I have never loved another woman, yes even my own ex-wife, as much as I loved this woman!

I have finally learned to put God first in my life! I have been through hell and back with my life. It was one that I would never have wished for this woman that I loved so much. Then again, maybe part of the reason I went there was because I couldn't have the woman I loved so much.

Yet through it all, Jesus Christ, my Lord and my Savior, was there with me and rolled in the mud and the grime with me so that He, in His infinite love for me, could pull me out of a life of sinful depravity! Only by the strength of His mighty arm was this even possible! Such is my love for Him now that I love Him now even more than I love her! I may have been putting her first back then when she led me to Salvation in Jesus Christ, but now, that Salvation has been perfected in me, through His steadfast love, so that I can truly place Him first in my life!

See, I know now what I did not know then. The fact that even had she chosen me over him, that our life would not have been good and that it would probably have ended in divorce, for the simple reason that we, her and I, did not put God first in our lives!

Jesus said to those who questioned Him in Matthew 22:36-38,

36 Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 And he said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the great and first commandment.

Again in Matthew 6:33 He says,

33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Listen to the truth as I have learned it from His hand! If you put God first in your life, you will have a much better life than if you do not. It does not matter if you have the love of your life with you or not. It does not matter if you have money or not. It does not matter if you have fame or not. It does not matter if you have friends or not. What does matter is that you put God first! If you do that, He will give you all the desires of your heart!

God bless you all this day!