July 7th – First Things First

Taking It to Work:

Do you remember the first subject God spoke of when he gave the commandments to Moses? How about the answer from Jesus when the Pharisees asked Him what was the greatest, most important commandment? The answer: Nothing is to be higher than God in our lives. Anything that we serve, worship or honor that comes before Him, meets the Biblical definition of an idol or a false god.

Now at first, here in the 21st century, those commandments are glossed over a bit, even by Christians. After all, golden calves and wooden deities are long gone with ancient people, so there aren’t too many folks running around sacrificing to some fake god that really can’t deliver its promises.

I wish that were the case. After many years in men’s ministry, I have listened and read about many sad tales of men, and women, who sacrifice their marriages, their families and sometimes their integrity and honor, to serve a very popular god of our day. Its name? Prosperity, sometimes it goes by the more benign name of Career. And like the false idols of the past, this lifeless entity finds its power in the desires of earthly people willing to do whatever is required to be rewarded with earthly things.

It is a big temptation. Yes, even as professing Christians, we can be lured into giving our highest and best efforts to our jobs, opportunities, and professions, in the name of prosperity and success, while putting our dedication to Christ and our families on the rear burner. There are 100,000 sad stories out there, about what can happen when you do that. Even if we’re wildly successful from the view of our accountant, the real eternal analysis may show us as bankrupt in the areas that really count.

This is a hard thing to wrestle with, I know, but wrestling with things like this is exactly how the Holy Spirit can keep us in balance.

Careers are necessary, and prosperity is not a bad thing, but if that career is what we bow to, and the dream of advancement is what we pour all our resources into, while the things that are important to God are taking second place, including advancing our relationship with Him, then there should be concern. Without even realizing it, we can easily build a golden, modern-day idol that wants to displace God, our families, and our faith.

The great news: there are ways our work can be worship, pleasing to God and truly serving those we love. That is what FCCI and HisWordatWork is all about, integrating our faith and work, to build lives that keep God first, Monday through Sunday, as His Word works in you, today.

Daniel 5:23 (ESV) – But you have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives, and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored.

Exodus 20:3-5 (ESV) – You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…

Matt 6:21 (ESV) – For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matt 22:36-38 (ESV) – “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?”  And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.

Listening to the Holy Spirit:

Who calls for one who does not exist? In each heart of the created there is known the Creator. Pride blinds the child’s faith, and the world creates again the godless alter, for its attraction is palatable, and the teachings tickle the ear with desires of the unrepentant heart. These do not feed in famine, nor do they heal a soul of sin. In deep storm they do not save, and the voices of its followers it does not know. In needed refuge there is no shelter. Some – they return again to Me, for when the false is laid false, and the deceived abandon, again the created heart rises. Pride must concede that the child’s faith is restored in He who hears the downcast, and brings the repentant under shelter. Man cannot make for himself a suitable god, but before man, I Am, and My face beckons in the heart of even he who knows not his origin, he who listens not to whom his heart still calls.