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Who Is Your Number 1?

Ok, so I feel like this is something that is starting to happen to everyone now days. I feel as if this is something that we all struggle with. This is something that we have trouble with in our everyday life, but most of the time we do not notice these things. So, as I think every single person knows, God gave us the Big Ten Commandments. God gave ten rules to Moses for us all to live by. These commandments are not hard to understand; actually they are put very simply. Well, I feel like there is one commandment that we are not necessarily overlooking, but we are not recognizing that we are doing it. In Exodus, God gives Moses the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. And the first commandment God gives Moses is this: You shall have no other gods before me. And you know that is put about as simply as you can. So Moses goes down from the mountain and what does he see? He sees Aaron and the others have made a golden calf out of their jewelry. They were worshipping a god outside of their Lord and Savior. Now, I am not saying that people now days are melting down gold and making statues of gods outside of Christ, but we might as well. We might as well melt down some gold and put it in the form of a TV or an i-pod, or video games, or of master chief from halo, or a football. Or if you want to get personal, we mine as well melt down a gold statue of "hot babes" or beer cans or drugs or yes, even facebook. We might as well do that because whether you notice it or not, you and I do it almost everyday. You and I both come home and we go and sit down and turn on the TV or flip on the 360 and play some halo. We come in and go to our fantasy football and spend all night on it. Now I am not saying that having a 360 or having a TV is bad and that it is a sin. Not at all! I am saying whenever you start to spend so much time on it that it ends up interfering with your time with God. When you come home and the first thing you do is run to your room and turn on your video game system and play in front of it for hours, then it has become an idol. When you sit in school and all you can think of is, "man I can't wait to get home and beat this level" or " I can't wait to watch these TV shows" or "I can't wait to get on facebook" and that takes up a lot of time, than it has become an idol. I mean think about it, you know when you are overboard. Question think of your favorite material object that doesn't deal with God? You got it in your mind? Be honest, what means more than anything to you? Now, what if it crashed? What if it got stolen? What if you no longer had it? What would you do? Could you go on with out missing a beat? or would you sit there pretty much in a withdrawal mode? If you could not go on without constantly missing it than it has become a distraction and most likely an idol. This is something God convicted me of this summer! On top of many. But as many of you knew, I was addicted to video games. They were an idol. I spent hours when I got home and would play till 2 am in the morning. I would come home and sign into X-box Live and play Gears of War or Guitar Hero II. I would not have quite times because I would have to play the game all night. I would spend any free time at school talking about those video games. Well, during camp God broke me of that addiction. And just to test how I would react, he broke my xbox. And you can ask some of my close friends, I was hardly fazed, sure I said it sucked but I used it as an opportunity to pick up guitar and I no longer think about video games all day. Not I will admit, I still like them and that's ok, but I would much rather be reading the Bible or a good Christian book. So this is what I ask you today. What do you spend the most time on during the day? How many hours do you play video games? How many on TV? How many times do you get on facebook and how many hours do you spend on it? On Myspace? How much time do you spend on the computer? How much time do you think of the opposite sex? Of Alcohol, drugs? Now how much time do you spend with God? How much do you read your Bible? Spreading the Word? Worshipping? Praying? How much time do you spend on these things? With most people, I would be willing to bet you could put all the time you spend with God that day and double that amount probably even triple it and I bet you would not equal out to the time you spend on some of your material things. This goes through all of our minds. Man, that i-pod is something; it holds all my music and holds like 10 movies. I can listen to it all day.......or.... Man, this game is amazing, I get to be master chief and save the world! Yes!....... Man, look at this TV! It has HDTV and is 42 inches..... I can watch all the episodes of 24 or the hills or Laguna beach......Man check out these cool applications on facebook, I can stay on here now for a couple hours......Wow, check out this fantasy football, check out this football game, check out these new laptops. You know I am right, you know that is what goes through your mind, as does mine. But something that rarely goes through our minds is this. Man, check out this book, it is amazing, it has so much advice and how to live my life.....listen to this music, it is so uplifting........Man check out this God, he is something. He sent his perfect son to save MY life. He is the alpha and omega the beginning and the end. With one breathe he created the world into existance. He turned water into wine, he fed 5000 people, he rose the dead, he was born of a virgin. He loves me unconditionally and is always there for me no matter what. Man look at that God. Now that is something to be addicted to. So I ask you this, who is first in your life? Is it your 360? is it your TV? Is it your I-pod? Or is it your Savior and your Father? Who do you spend your time thinking of? You know you can ask any Christian what is first in your life, and everyone will give you the same answer. "God"! It has just become the ideal answer. But is that really what is first in your life? So I ask you this. Who is number 1 in your life?