Into the Fire

Ask Christians if they’d put just about anything before their families and you’ll hear a resounding “No!” because it even sounds wrong. Right? Well, men and women do it everyday at work. Usually for justifiable reasons, almost always financial in scope but occasionally from peer pressure. Then there is “mandatory overtime” which is well and good when the paycheck is issued but can result in problems on the home front once in awhile.

What about the Lord? What about putting things in front of Him, as in doing everything else but what He has for you to do? Again, we might want to answer with an adamant “No way!” but the truth is we do it more often than not.

Finding the balance is a constant pursuit, and many of us fail frequently—not from lack of desire to succeed but in the inability to establish right priorities. How do we make God first in everything? In real life with real demands how do we do it?

I don’t have the answers, not all of them—just in case you were wondering. I do have the desire to have the answers. The right answers—the ones God provides to those who diligently seek Him first.

And His answers are the only ones worth having. Someone writes a book and gives the answers for organizing life’s details—it works for your neighbor, but you fail miserably at it. Same with just about anything. God desires to be our rescuer. He desires for us to depend on Him, not on someone else, even when what He suggests for us works for others, too.

You are unique, and your relationship with your heavenly Father is unique as well. He is the only one who has the perfect insights to your inner workings, motivations, hard places, and tough areas. He’s the one with the plan. The plan that works. For you.

And since He’s the one with the plan that works, seek Him first. Listen to His voice. Sometimes in all the din of life’s voices, His is the only one worth hearing and the most difficult to discern. We get so used to all the others that we fail to recognize His.

The temptation is to follow someone else’s plan. The temptation is to edge along at status quo. The temptation is to talk the talk but not walk the talk. The temptation is to settle for the “norm”—according to whom?

He is worth listening to, following, allowing to regulate and cultivate and manage and direct our lives. His motive is love. His best instruction requires discipline—a word that makes a lot of us shudder. But when it gets right down to it, what of any importance and value doesn’t require some form of discipline to accomplish it?

The temptation is to follow the way of the flesh. Do what we want, when we want, why we want. And wind up disgusted when all the same things happen because of it.

This girl is not going to tell you what to do. Because the Bible says it better than anyone. “Seek first the kingdom of God . . .” However you must, however you can, to overcome the temptation not to put our Lord first.

Father, I struggle with this, too. When fear overwhelms me, when discouragement shouts at me, when failure hisses at me, when laziness gangs up on me. Forgive me, Lord. You deserve my best which is not much in its fullness—but you deserve the best I can give. Help me, Lord, to give it all to you. Every day. Please. In the Name of Jesus, Amen.