God First, Family Second, then Everything Else!

Last week I received an email from a gentleman named Eric.  In this email Eric simply shared some thoughts that he felt convicted to write down as we begin entering into this year's whitetail season.  Eric's emal is very timely and a simple, yet profound, reminder that we must keep our priorities in line with God's will for our lives.  The following was written by Eric and used by permission.

Now that hunting season is upon us we will be spending countless hours perched up in a tree. We are focused on deer and everything around hunting the whitetail deer. Many of us will put off things in our personal life to get that extra hunt in. We make personal sacrifices because we want to go hunting so badly. We want to spend every spare minuet up in a tree over looking our favorite hunting ground. Yet we sometimes forget what is really important.  We let some of the most important things in our life slip away because of deer season. We forget that God has provided all of this to us and at any moment he can take that away from us. We forget that He is the one who created this for us to enjoy, and yet we get so frustrated when we don’t see deer, or we miss a shot. We forget that this is all part of God’s plan for us. He has a reason why we are fortunate enough to tag out, or a reason why we did not tag out. Yet throughout the hunting season we push back family events and may miss a church sermon to go hunting. We put things on the back burner because hunting season only lasts for three months, so we “need” to hunt as much as possible. We need to find a balance with all of this. We have to remember that hunting is nowhere near the most important thing in life. Realtree has a famous slogan “Family, Friends, and the Outdoors”. I have a similar idea that we need to start following.  “God, Family, and everything else”. Without a family that allows us the time away from home we would not be able to get out and hunt (at least not without many arguments and hurt feelings). But more than that without God nothing would be possible. He is the one who gave us all of this to enjoy. We need to keep that in the front of our minds, not tucked in the back and bring it out every now and then. We need to live with God in the front and everything else behind it. As the rest of this season rolls on Remember that God ALWAYS comes first, family and friends in second, and EVERYTHING else including hunting takes the backseat in third.

Thanks Eric for the simple reminder to make Jesus the top priority in our lives!  Pastor Paul

Mark 12:30 KJV - And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this [is] the first commandment.

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