Love God first

I’ve often wondered, when standing in the grocery store checkout line, who the people are who write for and publish the magazine “Self”.   The in-your-face body shots, the racy articles, accompanied by the magazine’s name tell me these people are most honest in declaring their narcissism.  Most other magazines are as geared to fueling the narcissism in all of us, but this magazine boldly comes out and tells us so, without shame or guilt because putting number one first is how the world works. Unfortunately,  this is also how too many marriages work and un-work.

If you are married to someone who puts himself or herself first, you know what a cesspool relationship it can become.  When one loves himself first, the “love” goes no further than that.  Like a pond where there is no inlet or outlet, that kind of love becomes scummy and lifeless.

I have experienced that kind of relationship and I vowed to a friend that I would never let that happen again. I would rather be alone than be near someone whose love was only for himself.

I told her that the only way I would ever marry again is if the man loved God more than he would love me. I knew that I could live in a close second place if God was in first place.  Well, she thought that was a too-tall order, and so did I.  So be it.

Then one day God introduced me to a gentleman who was the most exuberant Christian I had ever met. I soon learned that he was that way because he loved God first and most over any other. 

It would seem that this “imbalance” of the distribution of his love would cause him to be “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good”. But the result of his choice to love this way makes him more able to love others.  His love for God first, makes him a conduit to love others well. 

As his wife, I am the recipient of this kind of love and I can, in turn, love him back selflessly.  Loving God first allows us to both receive God’s love for us through each other, which eliminates the narcissism and selfishness that plagues so many marriages. 

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added onto you, best describes the workings of this kind of love. I pray that husbands and wives who read that scripture would practice that principle in their marriages.