“Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” Matthew 6:33 (NKJV)
When we look at these words of Jesus, we immediately find them to be the most revolutionary human ears have ever heard. “Seek first the kingdom of God.” Even the most spiritually minded of us argue the exact opposite saying, “But I must live; I must make a certain amount of money; I must be clothed; I must be fed.” The great concern of our lives is not the kingdom of God, but how we are going to take care of ourselves to live. Jesus reversed the order by telling us to get the right relationship with God first, maintaining it as the primary concern of our lives, and never to place our concern on taking care of the other things of life.
“Do not worry about your life” (6:25). Our Lord pointed out that from His standpoint it is absolutely unreasonable for us to be anxious, worrying about how we will live. Jesus did not say that the person who takes no thought for anything in his life is blessed – that person is foolish. But Jesus did teach that His disciple must make his relationship with God the dominating force of his life, and to be cautiously careless about everything else in comparison to that. In essence, Jesus was saying, “Don’t make food and drink the controlling factor of your life, but be focused absolutely on God.” Some people are careless about what they eat and drink, and they suffer for it; they are careless about what they wear, having no business looking the way they do; they are careless with their earthly affairs, and God holds them responsible. Jesus is saying that the greatest concern of life is to place our relationship to God first, and everything else second.
It is one of the most difficult, yet critical, disciplines of the Christian life to allow the Holy Spirit to bring us into absolute harmony with the teaching of Jesus in these verses.
From My Utmost for His Highest by Oswald Chambers, updated by James Reimann
More Wisdom from Oswald Chambers
I have no right to say I believe in God unless I order my life as under His all-seeing Eye.
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P.S. This teaching confirms what Moses taught in Deuteronomy 6:5.
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” (NKJV). And what Jesus Christ said in Matthew 22:37-38.
The God of the Bible and the Son of God, Jesus Christ, consistently and continuously sought to show man, since the Garden of Eden, that the best life for every person can only be found when God is at the very center of the life. There will be insufficient love for other relationships unless love of God comes first. There will be no satisfaction in daily life unless God is the focus of life. There will be overwhelming fear of the future unless God is the foundation of life. This love, focus and trust will be the essence of the blessed experience in heaven for born again believers when this life is over, just as complete self-love will be the essence of the terrible experience of suffering in the lake of fire for those who reject God.
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