Heavenly Notes “First Things First”

Heavenly Notes
“First Things First”
Idols of the Heart
Author: jacyjoypals

“So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”  Romans 7:12

“The law helps by serving as a tutor; The law also humbles me and brings me to the end of my self-righteousness; The law teaches me how thankful I am to be for Christ’s perfect keeping of it; The law becomes the standard of righteousness that I seek to obey out of thankfulness.”__Elyse Fitzpatrick

As we study God’s law and its importance to us as believers, we are reminded of the folly of disobedience and outright disregard of His law.  We see it in the Bible with our brethren and we see it daily with the unbeliever and unfortunately, we see it in our own lives.  We suffer much due to our placing other people, careers, hobbies, pleasures and other well-meaning and well-intentioned things before Christ’s clear and “for our good” mandates before us.  As some would say, “we want our cake and eat it too” — i.e., we want Christ but want to do and believe our “own thing” and use our sinful ignorance, pride and love of “intellectual” and “worldly wisdom” placed above His good and wise counsel to lead and direct our lives.  We love the self-satisfaction of being “tickled” with witty and worldly thinking and application.  We are fed with truth from God’s  Word but we still want baby food and fluffy, emotional, tear-jerker, oh me, oh my, self-satisfying dogma rather than the truth of Christ and His marvelous love and grace at work in our lives to tutor, humble and lead us.  This must not be as He has commanded. 

Many times as believers we suffer for righteousness sake but we also suffer for our own idolatry and self-serving means to an end rather than placing our King of kings and our Beloved Husband, Christ, first in our lives.  Is Christ first?  Is His Word, prayer, sacraments and guidance first?  He is and must be first only. Would it be that God would always have first place and His Word and guidance be preeminent.  Pray that it might be so in your life today and that His Word and those commandments He has given as a guide and “tutor” for us and our children will be “put on” and honored to the praise of His glorious grace.  Let us be doers and not hearers only by His grace.  But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added to you. Matt 6:33

“If God would not give me a heart to love Him, I would I never had a heart.”__Richard Baxter