How are you moving God to second, third, or even fourth place in your life and heart all in the name of love and devotion to your family and friends or even your job?
The balance of loving your people, providing for your people, and keeping God first in your heart can be challenging and confusing even if you have the best of intensions to live a surrendered life to Christ.
God made us to need one another. To be in community with one another. He didn’t just make Adam and leave him all alone in the world. God gave him Eve. And then there wasn’t just Eve, there were animals, there were children, there were communities, and towns, and then hundreds, and then thousands, and millions, and billions of people in the world. Along with all of those come responsibilities, needs, and wants.
Yes, I do think that God created us to need one another. Eve was created to be a helpmeet for Adam. A companion. A partner in life. Literally, men and women need one another in order to create life and to populate the world.
You need community and support from one another for things that occur in your everyday life. It is nice to enjoy celebrating the good times with those you love. It is comforting to feel the support of those that love you when you are going through a difficult time. The amount of happiness that can be achieved by simply watching those you love interact with one another while doing those daily mundane things that are far too often taken for granted is remarkable.
There are so many reasons why we are important to one another as human beings. But let us not forget where and who gave us one to another. Let us not forget who makes you who you are. Let us not forget who provides you with all the blessings of those people and the material things you need to provide for yourself and your loved ones. Let’s not forget who allowed you to be in relationship and community with all those people and who provided all those things to you.
If you are not intentional and purposeful it can be very easy to lose sight of who your provider is. It can be easy to lose sight of who you need to be grateful to for those people in your life; for that job and resources that are available to you which provide the material things you and your loved ones need and want that make your lives more comfortable.
It can be very easy to forget that God wants you to not only have community with one another but even more important than that, He wants you to have a relationship with Him. He wants you to talk to Him. He wants you to come to Him with your problems and heartbreaks just like you would bring those concerns to your best friend. He wants you to take time to listen for Him to speak to your heart. He wants you to take time to get to know Him by learning about His character in His Word.
Being intentional with your relationship with God may feel intimidating at first. You may not think that you know what to do or what to say to Him. The phrase putting God first in your life may not even make any sense to you because it can be difficult to wrap our minds around having a relationship with this all power, all knowing God that seems so big.
I want you to know that the biggest want God has for your life is for you to have a relationship with Him. For you to love Him with a love bigger than you have for anyone or anything else. So many people are searching for God’s will for their life… it is simple… It is the first and greatest commandment that Jesus gave to us in Matthew chapter 22:35-40 (NLT) of the New Testament. As we will see below, the first and greatest commandment is to love God with all that we are and then second is to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.
35 One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
37 Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’[a] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[b] 40 The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
I would like to say that the first place I go to during times of heartache or confusion is God’s Word and prayer. But that is NOT always the case. Sometimes, yes. But not always. Although I know prayer and His Word should be priority, like most, I usually try my way first. You know, so it can just take longer I guess, than if I would just trust Him to be Him, right?
Instead of remembering how much He seeks me out and wants relationship with me, like I should, sometimes I can place God inside this box where other humans in my life have left me heartbroken and I am afraid to trust. Yes, afraid to trust even God.
But He is not like all the other people in our lives. No, no, He is not. I am smiling right now as I type these words. Our Lord, He seeks us out, He loves us like no other is capable of and that my friend, that should make all of our hearts smile.
You never ever, never, have to worry about The Lord rejecting you. You never have to worry about God seeing the real you and Him thinking less of you. He will not make fun of you. He will not walk away because things get hard. He will not abandon you. The love that God and Jesus have for you is an incredible love that you nor I can do anything to lessen it.
Last week as I was thumbing through this little old worn out Bible of mine, that I love so dearly, I was heading over to one of my favorite chapters, Psalm 139, to read about how much the Lord loves me and how He knit me together before I was born and how He made me so wonderfully complex and how He knows all the tiniest things about me, that’s how important I am to God.
That is how important YOU are to God!
I needed to read those words, I needed to know someone loved me in a way that was genuine and that was good. So as I was making my way to that passage that I am so familiar with, my eye was caught on a highlight on a page in Jeremiah 31. The text I had highlighted from a previous reading was strong enough that I began at the beginning of chapter 31 and started reading.
Oh, I tell ya, the Lord knows exactly what part of His word we need and when we need it. The desperation in my heart for the Lord that night was nothing if not a yearning to simply feel the love of someone toward me. Just to want to be loved and to want to be wanted and not rejected. Not unseen.
As I began to read the words in that chapter my eyes filled with tears and my heart filled with love. Every time in my life that I have found myself so desperate for Jesus, so spent and just exhausted from life, it’s also been the moment that I have finally given up on the thought that I can make my heartache any better on my own or that anyone else can either.
Allowing space for the Lord has been when I have finally let down my guard of protection. The guard of protection that was really for other humans and yet sometimes we can be so beaten up by the world that we forget and put God inside that box as well.
I have found that I eventually decide to let God out of that box not meant for Him once I cannot do it on my own anymore. Once I am so tired of trying.
So tired of swimming upstream against the currents of life and not making any traction but am so exhausted that I cannot do one more stroke of nothingness.
Surrender.
Allowing God to have space in my heart that is meant for only Him.
Heart bending conversations with Jesus. Being vulnerable with Him and understanding that of all the people in my circle of influence, He is the one person I could count on to love me back.
He is the one person that I could trust with my heart.
He is the one person that I can know will not ever reject me. Because I am worthy of His love.
He made me worthy of it, because of Him, you are worthy. Period. You are worthy.
In the midst of all the different types of relationships and people in your life God still expects you to allow Him to be your number One. He still expects you to put your faith and trust in Him. He still expects you to care more about what He thinks than worrying about what others are thinking about you.
He is the end all and be all. Not anyone else.
For me, finding that balance of appropriate prioritization of God and loved ones is a matter of both behavior and mindset.
I believe that God is very individualistic in how He chooses to mold us. But I also know that His Word is unchanging. So while His greatest commandment is for all of us to love Him with all of our hearts, souls, and beings, I think that He will use different teachable moments for each of us depending on what will be impactful to each individual person but His Word and commandments are the same truth for all.
That being said, The Lord has been very personal with teaching me the importance of Him being first in my heart and in my life. I have learned to not let emotion have so much control over me. I can stand firm in His truth of who I am as His child instead of falling to the emotion of feeling like I am not good enough based off how other people may treat me. I have learned that having boundaries is important. Not everyone should have access to some parts of who I am, especially if they have shown me that trust should be questioned. Guarding my heart is my responsibility and something that God does also tell us in His Word that we should do. I no longer open myself up like I have in the past.
I have to be responsible for the wellbeing of me. For me, that is part of God being first in my life. When I know He wants relationship with me. And I know that He is a safe place that will not hurt me and He has told me to guard my heart. For me, all of those things guide me toward a stronger relationship with God. Allowing Him to be my confidant, reading His Word, seeking direction and listening. No, that does not mean that I never talk to anyone about what is going on in my life. As I said before, God built us for community and to need one another. But, it does mean that I seek Him first. That I pray about the heavy things before I talk to others about them and it definitely means that I am more guarded with my heart and who I allow in.
There can be a lot of gray area when we think about the balance. But, one thing I know is that no body loves you like God does! No body loves you like Jesus does! And you will never go wrong with trusting them to be the Lord of your life.
I pray that my story and experiences can be helpful to you but there really is only one way to know what putting God first looks like for you. Talk to Him, just like He was your best friend sitting right beside you. Because He is. Open your heart and ya’ll will figure out what it looks like for you. He accepts you however you come to Him. He is just glad you are there.
Jeremiah 31 tells us:
We are His. He loves us. He will give us rest.
He loves us with an everlasting love. He loves us with an unfailing love.
He will rebuild us. We will be happy again. Tears of joy will stream down our faces.
He will lead us home with great care. He will gather us (seeks us out) and will watch over us.
He will redeem us from those that are too strong for us.
Our lives will be like a watered garden and all our sorrows will be gone. He will turn our mourning into joy.
He will comfort us and exchange our sorrow for rejoicing. The Lord says do not weep any longer.
There is hope for our future.
We are His children. He loves us no matter what. He longs for us.
He has mercy for us. The Lord will cause something new to happen.
He has given rest to the weary and joy to the sorrowing. He will plant us anew. He will rebuild us.
Such good stuff in this chapter, if you want another reminder of how much you are loved by our Father, I challenge you to go read Jeremiah 31!! The One who wants us to put Him first in our lives… This is how much we are loved by Him.
Much Love ♥️
Michelle
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- Shine: Stepping into the role you were made for by Allison Allen
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- NIV Life Application Study Bible
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- Entrusted by Beth Moore
- Fervent by Priscilla Shirer
- The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Rediscovering Israel by Kristi McLelland
- Life After Life by Raymond Moody