First Thing First

So tonight I'm going to teach a message titled First Things First, and I was remembering a time when I was working in the construction field.

I saw my boss walking.

It was kind of a muddy, a muddy berm that there were a lot of truck ruts in it, and he was griping because people had left their tools out and left things out in the mud.

And he sees a big piece of chain laying there in the mud and he grabs one end of it and he starts dragging this chain.

I said well, why are you dragging a chain?

He turned around gruff and he said well, you ever tried to push one?

I kind of regretted asking him anything in that moment.

But you don't push a chain, you pull one.

You don't put the cart before the horse, the horse goes in front of the cart.

And so there's a particular order to things and there's a particular order to some things in God's word that I want to bring to your attention tonight.

This is not all-inclusive.

There's other things that could be added in at a later date and maybe we'll do that sometime.

But first things first, and we're going to get started in his word tonight, and so I'm going to start in Proverbs, chapter four, verse seven.

And Proverbs four seven says wisdom is the principal thing.

Therefore, get wisdom and in all you're getting, get understanding.

And so wisdom is the principal thing.

And if you're taking notes, you're probably writing wisdom down as the as one of the first things.

Proverbs 24, three says through wisdom a house is built and by understanding it is established.

By knowledge, all the rule rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches.

Proverbs two six also speaks of wisdom and understanding and knowledge.

You know the wisdom is given from God and the knowledge and understanding comes from hearing God's word.

So the work, the spoken word of God or the written word of God, we can gain knowledge and by meditating on his word we can gain understanding.

But God gives us wisdom.

Proverbs 14, 12 says there's a way that seems right to man, but its end is the way of death.

And so we want to have wisdom when, we want to have godly wisdom so that we can know how to operate in life.

And there's a way to get wisdom.

James, chapter five, verse I'm sorry.

James, chapter one, verse five, says if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally, without reproach, and it will be given him.

But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind.

Don't let that man suppose that he'll be receiving anything from the Lord.

It calls him double minded and unstable when you don't ask in faith.

And so we know we can get wisdom from God.

It's something that's given to us from God, and all we have to do is ask.

And so, talking about first things first, tonight, one more scripture in Proverbs, and this is verse nine, chapter nine, verse 10,.

It says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy one is understanding.

And so you might be tempted to think that wisdom is the, it's the principal thing, but it's not the first thing.

The first thing is the fear of the Lord.

You can't begin to get wisdom, which is given from God, you can't begin to get that if you don't first fear God.

And it says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and I think it's written about 14 times throughout the Proverbs the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

And so you want wisdom, it's the principal thing, but you got to start with the fear of God, and that simply means that we're going to put God first.

We care more about what God thinks on any issue, on any circumstance in life.

We care more about what he thinks about it than what our emotions say.

What our emotion says, what our brain says, what our friend says, what our parents say.

We have to decipher things by godly wisdom, and that begins with the fear of God.

And so the first things first.

The first first is the fear of God.

We'll move on from that one and we'll launch into the next one.

Again, talking about wisdom, in Matthew 7, 24 through 27, I won't read it all, but Jesus is talking, and he said therefore, whoever hears these sayings of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.

And we know that the storms came and the floods rose and beat against that house, but because it was built on the rock, it was not shaken, it was not moved, it was not destroyed.

And so, talking about building a house, psalm 127, verse one says unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain.

Who build it?

Unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.

And so I can remember a time in my life where I was trying to do everything on my own.

I wasn't seeking after God.

I didn't really have what I would call a fear of God.

I had a measure of a fear of God, I had a respect for God, I did care about what God thought.

But I was just trying to do so many things on my own and I was failing miserably.

I was in debt.

I didn't have enough money to even buy enough groceries to live off of, I couldn't pay rent, my supply was less than zero, I was running out faster than it was coming in, I had debtors calling me and I had a little bit of money in the bank.

And I remember coming to church when my brain was telling me I should have been taking my final exam.

I'm an engineering student, it's my senior year, it's my last semester of my senior year and I don't see that I have enough money or supply to make it to the end.

And so, rather than go take a final exam, I went to church instead and I put God first and, rather than pay my rent or buy more groceries or pay my electricity bill or whatever other debts I had, rather than paying any of that I took just almost the last of what I had.

I left about $25 in the bank and I wrote the biggest offering of my life, and that was a $500 offering.

I put in and I gave it to God.

And at the time that I did that, I repented and I recognized I'm not doing things right, I'm laboring in vain, god's not building my house, my house is not built on a rock, I'm not operating in wisdom and I'm not doing things right and I'm failing miserably.

And so I gave that offering and repented.

I honored God with my offering and in doing so, I put my school, my career, my graduation, everything on the line.

But God is faithful.

And that was the moment that things really turned around in my life, when I gave up on the way I was doing things and me building my house, and I honored God and I put Him first and I cared more about what he thought about my situation than my thoughts about it.

And so, to finish up that story, I showed up at school the next day and was walking down the hall and my professor the professor who was giving the final exam the night before that I had missed and it was actually two final exams that I missed.

He said, James, you missed your final.

I said, yes, sir, I did.

And he said what happened?

And I said I just decided that I needed to be in church more, that I needed to be in class.

And he said oh well, would you like to come to my office and take your finals?

I said, yes, sir, I would please and thank you.

And so I got to take those finals.

I did graduate from college and you know, I studied engineering.

I graduated and my life completely turned around after that, because when I didn't see a way out of my trouble, god provided a way out of my trouble and I landed a great job.

When I didn't see that there was a way to get to that job, which was starting in Florida, the owner of that company called me back and gave me a $2,000 advance and it wasn't really an advance, it was a gift, because I never had to pay it back and I didn't have to work it off.

And so he helped me get to Florida.

And then he said and while you're there, we'll give you a vehicle and we'll give you a place to stay until you can get your own and get on your feet.

And so God made a way, and it was on my way to that job that I met my wife.

And so when you repent and turn around and give up on the way you're doing things, the laboring in vain, doing things in the way that you think is right, that man thinks is right, when you honor God, put him first and you care more about what he thinks about it and you ask for that wisdom, he'll give it to you liberally.

And that brings us to the next, the next first, and that is to seek first the kingdom of God.

And we know where we find that in Matthew six.

But before we get there, I'm gonna read out of Psalm, chapter 34, verse four through 10, because this kind of speaks to that scenario, that segment of my life that I was in.

Psalms 34 · chapter mention

So Psalm 34, verse four says this I sought the Lord, I sought, I went looking for Him.

I called out to Him and he heard me and he delivered me from all my fears.

They looked to Him and were radiant and their faces were not ashamed.

This poor man cried out and the Lord heard Him and saved Him out of all his troubles.

God saved me out of all my troubles and I'm so grateful.

The angel of the Lord encamps all around those who fear Him and he delivers them.

O, taste and see that the Lord is good.

Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord.

And then here comes that word again fear, verse nine.

It says oh, fear the Lord, you, his saints.

There is no want to those who fear the Lord.

So putting Him first and caring more about what he thinks means that you're not in a position where you lack anything.

You don't want for anything.

There is no want to those who fear Him.

It says in verse 10, the young lions lack and suffer hunger.

And I was a young lion and I was lacking and I was suffering hunger.

But those who seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing.

And so the more I have sought the Lord, the more I've chased after Him and His purpose in my life, the more he's blessed me and blessed my family and taking care of our family.

And so, getting back to seeking first the kingdom of God, in Matthew, chapter six, verse 24, well, in verse 25, it says therefore I say to you this is Jesus talking.

Do not worry about your life.

You know, there is a time when I worried about my life.

I worried because I had creditors calling.

I worried because I couldn't pay the rent.

I was about to be out on the street.

I worried because I couldn't buy groceries.

I didn't have enough food.

I worried.

Am I gonna complete college?

Am I gonna pass?

Am I gonna finish?

Therefore, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, what you'll drink, nor about your body, what you'll put on.

Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

And he says look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap, nor gather in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

And are you of not more value than they?

And which of you, by worrying, can add one cubit to His stature?

Nobody ever got taller by worrying.

So why do you worry about clothing?

And it says consider the lilies, talk about the flowers here.

They neither toil nor spin.

And yet I say to you, not even Solomon, who was the wise king in all His glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

Now, if God closed the grass of the field, which is today and tomorrow, is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, oh you of little faith?

He's talking to His disciples who were worrying and doubting.

Therefore, do not worry saying what shall we eat, what shall we drink, what shall we wear?

For all these things the world seeks after For you.

Your heavenly Father knows that you have need of these things.

If you have to cry out to God and say, god, I need food, I need water, I need a house, I need a car, I need clothes, you're just telling Him stuff that he already knows, for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of these things and here comes the answer and you can quote it at home.

But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

You know, I was seeking first after those things that were a necessity in my life and they were important things.

But I was failing at achieving those important things, and the answer to my problem was seeking first after God.

And when I sought first after God, all the important things were added unto me and then I didn't lack for things anymore.

God made a way for me, and I just think about our lives today.

Back to Psalm 34, verse seven.

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and delivers them.

Why did the angels encamp around us?

We have angels encamped around about us, it said in the spirit realm.

I can't see them, but I know they're there because God's word says that they're there.

They're camped out all around me, all around my family.

They're camped out all around you and they have a purpose and they encamp around those who fear God.

So if you got people who don't fear God, they've got empty campsites all the way around.

There aren't angels there.

But if you fear God, those campsites are full of angels.

And it says and delivers them.

The angels are there to provide for us, to minister to our needs, to attend to our needs.

They're there for us.

And you know, our daughter was in a terrible car accident last October and she was life-fighted from the scene of that accident with the signs and symptoms of traumatic brain injury.

And Claire and I got that call.

We were almost maybe a mile or so from our house and we got the call from the fire department letting us know that our daughter had been in an accident and that she would be life-lighted.

And that would have been a time to fear.

If ever there was a time to fear, that would have been a time to fear.

And I won't say that we didn't feel fear.

You know fear.

There's a feeling of fear, but don't ever give fear a voice.

Don't let it come out of your mouth.

Don't speak words of fear.

You need to be speaking God's words.

You need to care more about what God thinks about that situation than what that feeling is telling you.

And it's not an easy thing.

But what came out of our mouth, claire and me, in the truck at that moment, what came out of our mouth was God's word, things like it is well with her, do not fear, only believe.

You know, there was a mom that was aware that the had been in an accident and she was terrified for the, his life.

She saw the scene, saw the horrible condition of the car, saw the helicopter and she called Claire desperate.

And Claire was able to comfort this lady, who was, you know, who had seen the event after it had happened, and Claire's comforting her and saying do not fear, only believe.

And yes, you can pray, but only pray God's word, don't pray anything else.

And so you know to fear God is to care more about what he thinks about that scenario.

Those facts might have been true in that moment, but facts are subject to change and they're subject to God's word.

His truth is what reigns, and so you speak God's truth.

The result of that was that we met the at the hospital and walked in that level one trauma unit and she's laying on the bed there and she's got a neck brace on and there's a little bit of blood in her hair and on her cheek and she leans over and she says I'm okay, mom, and Leigh's back mom, I'm fine.

And that was her response.

And that evening we walked out of there.

She had no real symptom, no injury.

They had done all these tests on her and she was fine.

The symptoms at the scene said traumatic brain injury and by the time we met her at the hospital there was no real symptom left.

She was fine.

God delivered her.

The angels of the Lord are encamped around about her.

She had a Holy Spirit warning before that accident happened and she responded to it.

She prayed and asked for protection.

The angel of the Lord camps round about our kids, around our family, around you, and if he did that for us, he'll do that for you.

And so there's huge benefits in fearing God, because you've got deliverance when you need it.

And so it pays to keep things in the right order.

First things first, and so we'll move on to the third and final one that I'll talk about tonight, and that is to act on your faith.

And so it's not enough to just have faith, but we've got to act on our faith.

I'm gonna read something out of Joshua, chapter one, verse three.

And it says every place that the soul of your foot will tread upon, I have given you as I said to Moses.

And so this is God speaking to Joshua.

Moses did not lead the Israelites into the promised land.

He stopped short of the Jordan River and Joshua became that savior type to the people of Israel and brought them into their promised land.

And God said every place that the soul of your foot will tread upon, I have given you just like I said to Moses.

I want you to pay attention to the tenses there.

The past and the future tense Every place that the soul of your foot will tread, every place that the soul of your foot will tread.

So there's a future thing, and it requires an action on your part.

Every place that the soul of your foot, joshua, will tread, you must do something.

You must tread Every place that it treads.

I have given you.

God had already given it.

He had already established that as the promised land, and I have given it to you.

And so how is it that something that's happened already requires an action in the future to obtain it?

Well, it's easy If somebody gives you something and you don't take ownership of it, the ownership is never really transferred.

Although you had the rights to it, you didn't ever take possession of it.

On our side, we can keep ourselves out of blessing, out of the promises of God.

If we don't take possession of it, if we don't apply an action with what we believe and what we say, we may never take possession of that promise.

And so, if there's ever anything to be done or anything to be performed, anything that God is going to perform on our behalf, it says in Jeremiah, jeremiah chapter one.

Let me just flip over there and I'll read a quick passage out of here.

And so, jeremiah chapter one.

Jeremiah is saying God, I can't speak, for I'm a youth.

And the Lord said to me in verse seven he said do not say I'm a youth, for you shall go to whom I send you, and whatever I command you, you're gonna speak.

That and do not be afraid of their faces, for I will deliver you, says the Lord.

And it says then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth and the Lord said to me behold, I have put my words in your mouth.

So Jeremiah didn't really have the faith to do what God was telling him to do.

And God put his words in his mouth.

Verse 11, it says moreover, the word of the Lord came to me saying Jeremiah, what do you see?

So God's proving something to him here, before Jeremiah acts on it.

Jeremiah, what do you see?

And he said I see a branch of an almond tree.

And the Lord said to me you have seen well, for I am ready to perform my word.

Well, what in the world does an almond branch have anything to do with God being ready to perform his word?

Well, you gotta remember this is written in Hebrew, and there were two Hebrew words that God spoke there.

One was for almond branch, which is Shaqed, and the other is I am ready to perform my word.

Ready to perform is Shaqad.

So it was a play on words.

God was having a play on words of two words that were very closely spelled and close in sound, but they were two entirely different meetings.

And so Jeremiah is holding an almond branch, and the almond branch was the first to bloom, and so it was a first to respond kind of a thing.

And so God used that word Shaqed, you have seen well, and then he said, shaqad, I am ready to perform my word.

And that word Shaqad means that God is, he's awake, he's hastening, he's, the anticipation is there, he is sleepless, he's alert, he's on the lookout, he is eager to perform his part of the deal, his part of the word.

God is always eager.

So if ever there's any performing to be done, god is eager, ready, watching, waiting to do that.

But he's waiting for a cue from us, and we provide the cues that result in the performing of God's word.

And so, getting back to the ownership, every place that the soul of your foot will tread, I have given you.

And so if you buy a house and you have the title, well, you have ownership of that house, but if you don't go take possession of it, you're gonna have somebody else come move in there, probably a homeless person squatting in that house.

If you don't ever take possession of it, it's not really yours, is it?

You haven't obtained the promise of what that title says.

So a little testimony here about Glorious Way Church.

When we had some land up for sale, there was a segment of the property that was a road right of way In order for us to build this church building on this corner right here.

We had plans to develop 10 acres the church building, the parking lot, the detention area that you see when you come to church.

But on the associated land we gave up a road right of way to the county.

They had plans to run a right of way through the property.

We negotiated with them and we negotiated the route of that road so that it wouldn't prevent us from building the building here on the corner, like we wanted to do.

And so we dedicated and wrote a document that was filed with the county.

We dedicated the right of way of this land.

It was an offer of dedication.

That was the title of the document, offer of dedication of right of way to that segment of road that would go through the property.

And we filed that with the county and there that document sat for years.

We had dedicated this road right of way on the property and it sat in the county filings for years.

And when we came time to sell the property, we were having trouble selling this property because it had this stinking road right of way cutting through it and the developers had a problem with it and it was tough to develop for them.

But we had dedicated that land to the county years ago, but they never took possession of it.

They never occupied that segment of land.

They didn't build the road, they didn't put any survey markers out there, they didn't delineate it on the property, they never set foot on it.

It was just in a file and they never looked at it, never cared about it, never took possession.

And so you know, we depended on God's wisdom.

We've got this property.

We need to sell this property.

We're going to pay our loan off.

God, give us wisdom.

How do we get through this?

And you know what God gave us wisdom.

We cared more about what God thought about things.

We had the fear of God.

That means that we had the beginning of wisdom.

He said if we asked for wisdom, he'd give it liberally.

God gave us a plan.

We received wisdom from God and this is what we did.

We filed so.

Previously we had filed a dedication, an offer of dedication of Road Right of Way.

Well, we filed a new document and this one was titled the Revocation of the Offer of Dedication.

In other words, we revoked the offer of dedication because the county never possessed it.

They never took possession of it.

So we repossessed it, we took it back and it was perfectly legal.

In fact that advice came from the county attorney who was working with us on that project and it was a blessing.

And we got the land back and we were able to sell all of it and pay off this mortgage here and it freed up this church.

We're completely out of debt because we put God first.

We sought first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

We had the fear of God to do everything that we did.

We were entitled to wisdom and we put action with our faith and so we got that land back.

Remember James, chapter two, verse 18, says faith without a corresponding is action being alone.

And so you can't say that you have faith if you don't also act.

And the action is always on our side.

It's never on God's side.

As soon as we act on our side, he is faithful and just to, he's watching over His word and he's eager to perform it on your behalf.

And so those are three firsts right there to fear God, to seek first and to act on your faith, and that's the message I have for you tonight.

I hope that helped you.