If my friends were talking behind my back about the priority of my life, I wonder what they might say. It’s sad when people say about a star hockey player – “Well, hockey’s his god.” Or, about a successful corporate climber: “She lives for her career. It’s her god.” Or “He lives to golf.” It’s one thing to say ‘he loves to golf’, but when someone suggests that he ‘lives’ to golf, it means golfing has claimed the first spot in his life – elevated to the pinnacle.
The very first commandment is:
You shall have no other gods before Me.” Exodus 20:3
Regardless of who is speaking in Psalm 42 or whose experience it may be portraying, it is plain to see the person is thirsting after God. Of course, the ultimate example of one whose God was His life was our sin-free Christ as He lived here on earth.
Unlike Christ, we can go through barren and painful times when we are not enjoying close communion with the Lord and fellowship with Christ. Sometimes we sin and we can immediately feel the barrier, and the distance only grows greater as we delay our confession. Other times, the Lord is testing us and our faith begins to flounder and we are filled with doubts. We wonder if God is still there.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God … By day the LORD commands his steadfast love, and at night, His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. Psalm 42:5-8
In times of discouragement, in times of trouble, in times of despair can I get alone with God and tell Him He truly is the God of my life? Or would such words be shallow and a bit hollow? Would the words be bouncing back at me:
“Sure! ‘the God of my life’; who am I trying to fool? God knows I haven’t been giving Him first place in my life. I’ve only been ‘nominally’ worshipping Him as my God; but if I was to be 100% truthful, I spend a lot of time bowing at the shrine of success, pleasure, and other selfish pursuits.”
The late Anglican Evangelical John Stott defined ‘other gods’ in our life this way:
You shall have no other gods before me. This is God’s demand for man’s exclusive worship. It is not necessary to worship the sun, the moon and the stars to break this law. We break it whenever we give to something or someone other than God himself the first place in our thoughts or our affections. It may be some engrossing sport, absorbing hobby, or selfish ambition. Or it may be someone whom we idolize. We may worship a god of gold and silver in the form of safe investments and a healthy bank balance or a god of wood and stone in the form of property and possessions. None of these things is necessarily wrong in itself. It only becomes wrong when we give to it the place in our lives which belongs only to God.”
As we go about our activities today, may this question be embedded in our minds: “Who or ‘what’ really is the God of my life?” Would my friends think God has absolute first place in my life? Would my family think God occupies the throne of my heart – or would they see me as just doing my best to fit God into my schedule and trying to act as if He were the God of my life? Would they see genuine reality or a bit of a contradiction between my high words and holy prayers and how I really live from day to day?
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May the Lord help us to evaluate our lives in light of the place the Lord should have in our lives. In times of distress, temptation or failure, how awesome it is to be able to approach God with confidence and call Him the God of my life. The Apostle Paul wrote so clearly these words with a life to back them up: “For me to live is Christ.” Philippians 1:21
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