How can putting God first help me to have a Happy New Year?

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Revelation 4:11 “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power…”

I’ve been writing about how we can make 2015 the best year ever. For me and perhaps for you, that means “getting our house in order.” (2 Kings 20:1) The first thing we looked at was adjusting our focus and surrendering our will to God’s will. When I have a problem with that (and I sometimes do), it helps to remind myself that God’s first command to me is that I have no other gods before Him. (Ex 20:3)

Now wait a minute! We don’t worship other gods like some pagan! While we probably don’t have an altar to some pagan god in our home, I wonder if we really give God first place in our lives the way He requires of us. In Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, he starts out with the words, “It’s not about you.” He’s right. I hasten to add here that it’s also not about your loved ones, your broken heart, or your prodigal.

Regardless of what might be going on in our lives, our text verse reminds us that God is worthy to receive honor and praise. Why? It doesn’t get simpler than this: He has created all things, including you and me, for His pleasure. Because of that alone, He is worthy of our praise and obedience. And He needs to have first place in our lives.

Putting and keeping God in first place will mean letting go of fear and that compulsion to know about things we can’t control. It will keep us from obsessing about what our prodigals are up to or what that medical test is going to reveal. I heard someone say that the person or thing we think of when we first wake up and the last person or thing we think of before we fall asleep…that is our god.

That’s also true about the person who consumes our thoughts during every waking moment. God expects and deserves to have first place in our lives. And if we are waiting for and worrying or wondering about our prodigal, our focus isn’t where it needs to be. We’ve made our prodigal or our problem our god, and both God and we ourselves deserve better than that.

I know how hard that is. There are days when someone’s acting-out behavior is the topic of an entire day’s conversation at my house. So I’m right there with you. But knowing it happens in my life and yours doesn’t make it right. And it doesn’t give me the peace my heart so longs for. I sometimes…maybe even often…fail at giving God first place just as I often fail Him in other ways.

However, it doesn’t matter how many times you and I have failed. Peter had denied the Lord three times, and three times the Lord asked him, “Lovest thou me more than these?” Regardless of Peter’s past failures, Christ wanted and expected that Peter would try to get it right this time and “love Him more than these…” (John 21:15)

It doesn’t matter what mistakes we’ve made in the past or what mistakes we will make tomorrow because “failure isn’t final with the Father.” God wants…more than that, demands the best that I can give Him today.

Challenge for Today: What might happen if we, just for today, put God in first place in our lives?