Are You Putting God First?

I was feeling a bit flat spiritually. Okay, really flat. With little inspiration to write, to read, or even pray, it was all I could do to keep from sinking into depression. When the Lord led me to search my soul about it an unsuspecting thought surfaced, which I did my best to ignore. Nope, THAT’s not the problem. Next thought, Lord.

No matter how much I tried to deny it, the Holy Spirit kept bringing the same subject up in my heart and mind - through devotions I would read, messages I would hear, songs that left a thick lump in my throat, and through conversations with my friends and family.

You haven’t been putting Me first. I asked God to show me what was out of order, so He began revealing it to me.

One morning I was sitting in “my” chair (the one I sit in to read my Bible). I had just checked my email and commented on a few blogs when I got up to get my second cup of coffee. As I looked over at the side table, the image I saw froze in my mind: It was my laptop sitting on top of my open Bible. When I had first sat down that morning, I’d opened my Bible to the book of Psalms, which is how I’d been jumpstarting my morning for several years. Then I thought I’d take juuuuust a second to check my email before the kids got up. After all, I’d rather them see my face in the Bible instead of my computer first thing in the morning.

While my rationale seemed justifiable at the time, I sensed the Holy Spirit sobering my heart, pointing out that I’d been doing this more and more lately - the end result being less and less time with the Lord. I was getting into a habit of coming before Him distracted and half-heartedly - sometimes not at all.

I hadn’t been putting Him first. (Gulp)

I’d become more excited about checking my email and my blog in the mornings than I had been about checking what God had to say to me through His Word. No wonder I was at the point of depletion. I was pouring myself out to things that couldn’t fill me back up.

It wasn’t that I had been intentionally walking in sin or anything, but I hadn’t been intentionally guarding my time with God either. His Word corrected me with the Old and New Testaments working together: “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord” (Rom. 12:11), and  “…be vigilant, lest you be seduced away and end up serving and worshiping other gods and God erupts in anger and shuts down Heaven so there's no rain and nothing grows in the fields, and in no time at all you're starved out—not a trace of you left on the good land that God is giving you” (Deut. 11:16-17, The Message).

When we let “things,” good, bad, or in-between, woo us away from our One and Only, then our spiritual growth suffers. God’s a jealous God, and He wants our full devotion. If we don’t stop and repent, turning our face to Jesus, we’ll waste away to nothingness spiritually speaking, bearing little fruit to offer anyone else.

Is there something sitting on top of your Bible? What’s sapping the life right out of you? Whatever it is, are you being honest with yourself about it?

The reason I ask that last question is because I wasn’t. My husband had asked me several weeks earlier if I was becoming overly dependent on my laptop, and I gave him the most defensive “NO” I’ve given him in a very long time. That should’ve been the first clue.

So, in Spirit and in Truth, let’s think about the time we are devoting to technology and put things in the proper order again in our lives. As we move forward in His order, seeking His face more than any other, we’ll keep our spiritual lives from going flat. It’s only as we keep Him in full view that we can experience His life in full measure.

~ By Laura Lee Shaw