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“Draw near to God and He will draw near to you”  James 4:8

“But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you”  Matthew 6:33

For most of humanity, we could not get these two verses more wrong in our priorities for living. We do our “own thing” and expect God to come to us. We seek our own agendas, and then ask God to bless them. While it is true God does seek us out for salvation and “we love, because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19), our daily lives as “born again” believers should be one of obedience in  following our Lord and Savior. We are saved to be disciples of Christ who live by His power and are led by His Spirit, not in any other way. Here in America, we hold up being independent and “self-made” as ideals, but nothing could be further from the truth. Our every heartbeat and breath are from the Lord, and without His grace, we could do nothing at all. Reality is we are truly dependent on the Lord for all things, and the sooner we realize this the better! If we want the blessed life of close fellowship with our God, we must look at every day as a gift from Him to be used to grow in faith and love and let Him use us for eternal purposes. Sadly, it is hard to find a so-called Christian who truly believes this or lives this. Let us examine ourselves and see if our relationships, our vocation, or our use of time and money, are for God or simply for ourselves. It is in the daily activities of life we prove out our faith. Do we simply launch out each day on our own agenda, doing what we think will give us the most pleasure, or do we seek to honor God and help others to trust in Him? To keep our motives and actions right, we must begin and end each day letting the Lord speak to us in prayer. We need to make the daily habit of reading the Bible to grow in our understanding and application of truth and His will. We need to be faithful in our church attendance and participation as we have been called together as the Body of Christ to help one another and to serve together as a witness to a lost and dying world. We must draw near to God so He can speak to us. We must seek His will and ways for our life to be found faithful. By default, if we do not choose these priorities, we will absolutely live self-focused and self-willed lives. It is for certain! Let us choose to love the Lord as our #1 priority today and we can be sure eternal benefits will follow!

 

Pastor Gary Houdek