Five Finger Recovery: God has to come first.

May 9, 2014: Five Finger Recovery: God has to come first. Please "Share" this new Precious Prodigal Post: http://bit.ly/1itmbst

Gen. 1:1 “In the beginning, God…”

When the white rabbit in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland asked the King of Hearts where he should begin, the king gravely answered, “Begin at the beginning…” So in this discussion of five-finger recovery, we’ll begin with the largest, most important of our fingers, our thumb. That’s our beginning.

The thumb is the strongest finger in our hand, and it’s that “opposable thumb” that allows us to do the complicated manual dexterity tasks. It’s the thumb that makes the hand a working unit, and our hand would be very limited without it. In our “five-finger” recovery, the thumb stands for God. If our lives are going to work in any functional way and make sense or count for anything, it will be because we have given God first place.

If you haven’t heard Louis Giglio speak or seen one of his videos, there’s no way I can describe to you the way he presents God. You can see one of his videos for yourself at http://bit.ly/1kZ9g1D. When you have seen his video about our indescribable God, your view of God will be forever changed and probably your view of yourself.

What a daunting task it is to write about that God of the universe! God spoke and at His word, the stars, the planets, the very galaxies came into existence. The God who created man and breathed life into him…that’s the God I’m supposed to write about today? I have to ask myself, “Who am I to think I can speak with authority about such an amazing God as ours?”

Yet I feel I must because none of what you and I are going through or will go through with our prodigals or the other areas of our lives makes any sense without adding God into the equation. It was, after all, the Holy Spirit of God that brought order to our world by moving across the darkness, the void and the chaos when God said, “Let there be light.” (Gen 1:1-3) Bottom line…God needs to come first. This basic truth is so important, in fact, that I’ll introduce it today and finish it tomorrow.

So how do I put God first, and am I doing that? Being a practical person, I want to find some simple, practical ways that would tell me whether I’m giving Him first place. Simply put…what would that look like? One thing that occurs to me is that if God is going to come first, maybe I should start each day by spending time with Him.

I spend time studying each day so I can write for my blog or my book, but that isn’t spending quality time with the God who has redeemed me, called me by my name and said, “You are mine.” (Isa 43:1) Getting to know Him, learning to love Him, developing the desire to serve Him is a process.

It may start with spending time in my Bible and in prayer each day because it’s a duty. But what starts as a duty will become a discipline, and eventually it will be a delight. And putting Him first will cause us to see everything else in our lives more clearly. It all starts with God.

Challenge for Today: Can you, just for today, put God first? Can you write Him into your busy schedule?