My First Thought Not My Afterthought
Psalms 113:1-3
1PRAISE THE Lord! (Hallelujah!) Praise, O servants of the Lord, praise the name of the Lord! 2Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time forth and forever 3From the rising of the sun to the going down of it and from east to west, the name of the Lord is to be praised!
Most of us can safely say that we have a morning ritual. But does your morning ritual include blessing the name of Jesus, does it include praying to God, the maker of heaven and earth? Does it include spending time waiting on God to speak? Most of us would say yes I pray. I am not discounting any time with God; I am asking us to really look at where we apply our time. We will make time for everything that means something to us, so how we are spending our time what is that say about how much God means to us? If our boss says come in early we are there no questions asked, but if God wakes us up at 3:oo am, because He wants our time, would we be willing to talk to Him, and spend that time ministering to Him if that is what He wanted? I used to have a morning ritual, I used to get up, pray and get my kids started with their work, and then, go into my office and stretch out prostrate before God and then I would sit and wait in Him, until I felt a release in my spirit. I let someone in my life at that time talk me out of that, claiming it doesn’t take all of that. For me God needed to be in my forethought, my every thought before I started my day, I knew that.
Today, no matter who says what or thinks I should or shouldn’t I still can’t get started without talking to God and spending time pouring out on Him. Some mornings it is just worship, some days it is intercession, other days, it is just praise, and some days it is silence for me but He is speaking, Some days it is Lord I thank you. Some days it is an exchange. I know that God is better than life, and in addition to all that we go through He is still the one that gives life and even on our worse days, with Him, it is better than my best days without Him, how could we not seek Him out and spend time with Him? In life we make decisions, we make time for things and people, but where does God fit in? Do we think of Him, before we move daily, do you think about Him before we make a decision or commit to things, or do we commit and do and then think of what it is that He may want from us after? God should be our first consideration before we think, say or act, but all too often He is not present in any of those actions, and is not even a consideration. For others God is a consideration only after we have done things our way, and we need Him to clean up our mess or to forgive us, because we were out of His will, and we are now thinking about what our disobedience could mean to our lives.
There is a line that comes to mind from a praise and worship song that we sing at church: “My life is not my own, but it belongs to you to worship you alone.” If we understand who God is and we submit to Him in the way that we are supposed to; God is the first thought because we understand we are His to do with as He pleases, not the other way around. We understand that it is a miracle and an act of God’s grace that we were afforded another day and are being offered another opportunity to bless the name of Jesus and to ask Him, what we can do for Him today. God should never be the last thought, the last consideration in our lives when we say we are His and that we love Him. The people and things we love, we consider first, not last! So where is God on your priority list?
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