September 18

First Things First

But seek (aim at and strive after) first of all His kingdom and His righteousness (His way of doing and being right), and then all these things taken together will be given you besides.

MATTHEW 6:33

Too often we spend all of our time seeking God for possessions, for blessings, for answers to our problems, when all we really need to do is just seek God. The more we seek God because we simply want to be in relationship with Him, the more everything else in our lives falls into place.

In the early years of my ministry, I sought God about how I could get the ministry to grow. The result was that it stayed just the same as it was. It didn’t grow as quickly as I had hoped, and sometimes it even went backward. What I didn’t realize at the time was that all I needed to do was to seek the kingdom of God, and He would add the growth.

The truth is that we don’t have to beg God to give us anything. If what we want is His will, He will give us what is best for us at the right time. All we need to do is love God and seek Him first and want to do things His way. As we do, we will develop a closeness with God that is vital in order to properly handle success, or the material blessings of God.

Always seek the “presence” of God, and not the “presents” of God. He will give you many good things, but He does require first place in our lives. We are to have no other gods before Him!

Seek God before anything else, abide in Him, and you will draw closer to Him than ever before.