Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Put Doing The Lord's Will First

"But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well" Matthew 6:33
While our family was in Kentucky this verse was a theme that seemed to be a recurring theme. It seemed for the first couple of weeks every church we went to talked about that verse. So it got our attention. Vic and I began to talk about money and actually get on the same page with this. In the past we would agree on a budget, but his brain had not made all the necessary pathways for him to make the follow through decisions. Then he would in my opinion too freely spend money and in his opinion I would be too tight with money. While we were gone we talked a lot about money philosophies. The Lord was building brain connections for him. We were able to get on the same page financially and the follow through has been good.

One thing that struck both of us as we would have conversations about money is that it is not our work that provides for us-- it is the Lord. Scripture is clear that God will supply all of our needs in Philippians and in Matthew chapter 6 we are told not to worry about money. We also talked about how by not coming to agreement on how to use money it was becoming our master. Scripture is also clear in Matthew that we can not serve both God and Money. Then our conversations led further to stuff. The generation previous to ours had all the stuff you have was a status symbol and sense of security. Vic and I began to realize how much that affected us. How much having stuff had become a security blanket of sorts so when we lost most of our stuff it left us feeling insecure. Since we could not get on the same page we had remained in that same insecure state.

We prayed together and talked a lot about priorities. We began to filter our priorities together through Scripture and less through our families. It was only then that we were able to come to agreement or be on the same page. We agreed that we were going to seek God's priorities for our family. We also agreed that as we seek the Lord he will make those priorities clear to us. Then we will live out those priorities and trust God to provide for our family.


We are trusting the Lord to provide all we need because we are putting his priorities first. We have started to filter our budget asking if it fits God's priorities. If it doesn't we go back to the drawing board. Our checkbook we realized is really a reflection of who owns our heart the Lord or money. We have decided to take the Lord literally at his word when he says to put his kingdom first and trust him to provide the rest. This decision has brought peace and unity to our marriage. We still have some growing to do in this area, but we are now working and growing together instead of against each other.

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