This morning, we are finishing our last message in the series “The Naked Truth”. In the first two messages we looked at Covenant vs. Contract, and Sexual Purity.

What we have seen is that God’s design for marriage, relationship, and intimacy for covenant. His design is not to control, but to preserve purity, so that our lives will be filled with joy and spiritual fruit.

This morning, I am going to share a message with you I have entitled “First Love First”. It stems from a question: How do I love God more than my family, when the love of my family is all, I’ve ever wanted?

Turn with me to Mark 12:30–31 “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

It is not until we love God with our heart, soul, mind, and strength that we will be able to love our neighbor as ourselves.
• The heart is the center of our will, desires, and emotions. To love God with all our heart is about the seat of our affection where He becomes our greatest treasure.
• The soul (nephesh in Hebrew) refers to your entire living being, your breath, your life-force, and your deepest identity. The key element of this aspect is identity and the source of it.
• The mind is the faculty of your understanding. God is not looking for blind faith. He wants you to know Him better through intellect and gaining understanding and working knowledge.
• Loving God with our strength is about our physical output. How we use our strength is a tangible expression of our love displayed.

These are practical, it is the use of our energy, finances, time, and physical body.

These four areas are critical in practice if we are to do the second part, and that’s to love our neighbor as ourselves.

As we jump into the essence of the question, I think it’s important to establish upfront that the command of God to love Him above all is not about hating, being oppositional to, or loving your family less. It is about the order of priority and the source of your life, not competition.

We must understand that God does not compete for our attention or our devotion. He’s not asking you to walk away from your family, but He is asking for the proper orientation of our hearts to have no other gods before him.

I want you to notice something of key importance in this passage. Before them was life and death, blessing and cursing. They were instructed to choose life for what reason? So that both you and your descendants may live.

Loving God first, is what positions you to love your family to the fullest. Life and blessing are in Him. When we love Him and cling to Him by obeying His voice, we find our life and length of days.

Our families are a gift from God, but they are not the ultimate source of our life or peace. If we make our spouse, marriage, or children our source we will put a burden on them that they were not meant to carry and more importantly can’t fulfill.

Through intimate communion with God, that we absorb His values, nature, and priorities. These in turn shift our entire decision-making framework because His love becomes the governing influence.

When we prioritize God, it fundamentally transforms how we engage with everyone else in our lives. His influence reshapes our choices, conversations, and decisions, that ultimately redirect our lives and greatly impact the way that we interact with our families the close around us.

This past fall, I spoke in a message about prioritizing the vertical relationship. The effectiveness of our life horizontally (family, relationships, marriage, raising kids) is largely determined by the depth and intimacy of our relationship vertically.

If I lack depth and intimacy in my relationship with Jesus, I won’t be able to draw from my experience encounter with him into my other relationships. I will be pulling from a limited supply.

The challenge of pulling from that limited supply alone is that it won’t necessarily be based in truth, and it has a high likelihood of being inconsistent. What I’m going through in life will affect the supply.

How I feel emotionally will affect the supply. How good my relationships are will affect the supply. The potential is to have very high highs and very low lows That make life like a roller coaster.

When God occupies first place in our affections, He infuses us with His character, which in turn enables us to extend that same quality of love to others, and because he is the source of the supply, it will never run out.

The key thing I want to convey is that placing Him first isn’t a diminishment of family bonds. It’s actually what creates the conditions for healthier relationships.

The practical benefit of this alignment extends to our closest relationships. Loving our spouse or our children simply becomes an expression of our love for God. It’s the second part of the passage in Deuteronomy 30:20, choose life so that you and your descendants may live.

So, the key thing that sticks out to me here is that us choosing life and prioritizing our relationship with God is the way that our descendants also live. So, what that is saying to me is that it’s the emphasis of our vertical relationship that has the greatest impact on the horizontal relationships.

When God is first is takes the pressure off of our families. Human love is often “if” of “because” love. If they, or because they, it’s performance-oriented. If we put family first above God, they become the source of our identity. If they are the source than their failures can crush your spirit, and you can only love them with your limited strength. Your capacity becomes limited.

God’s love is unconditional. When He is first, you receive His unconditional love which allows you to love your family even when they are difficult, ungrateful, or failing. The source you love from is an endless supply. This means that no matter what you’re going through, you can continue to love because of what you have prioritized on the inside.

Let me share an additional thought that might cause a little internal discomfort or conflict. It’s possible for our family to become an idol.

An idol, by definition, is anything that usurps God’s rightful place in the hearts of His rational creatures. This is certainly a challenging thought, but it must be considered. Family can become an idol if devotion to family relationships displaces your allegiance to God.
For example, culturally, it has become a norm to replace worship and devotion with other activities. Schools schedule activities, both sports and others, on Sundays, such as travel sports, tournaments, etc.

I am not calling these things sin by any means, but from a principal standpoint, if we don’t steward the calendar well, it can turn into a form of idolatry where God no longer has the priority in your life. The practical spiritual danger connected to this is more subtle than blatant sin.

The danger is that because it is family-oriented, it is easy to rationalize and justify. The problematic aspect of the rationalization and justification is that it will still ultimately have a negative impact on keeping our first love first.

Now am I saying to pull our kids out of every activity no. What I am emphasizing is the importance to Steward our devotion wisely. Because if we don’t, our families will end up worshiping other gods. I think one of the greatest challenges in life is discerning the ripple effect of our choices.

In the parable of the Sower, the soil with weeds was unfruitful because it was the cares of this life, the deceitfulness of riches, and the lust of other things that had choked out the word, causing it to become unfruitful.

And I simply want you to consider that knowing about, God is not the same as knowing God. Singing songs about God on the Christian radio station is not the same as intimate worship in the secret place. Personal revelation that impacts your family in a positive way doesn’t come from what you’ve heard. It comes from the place of encounter.

The solution isn’t neglecting your family but reordering your heart to reflect your primary allegiance to God alone. The family is a good gift designed to advance God’s glory, but it must not displace Him or the priorities of His kingdom.

We simply want to keep it in alignment. When God is first, He is the source of our identity, and our family is blessed by Him. When God’s faithfulness sustains your life, you can love your family with God’s unlimited strength.

When we prioritize our vertical devotion, we can have immense beauty and blessing in the horizontal relationships in our lives. Remember this morning that it’s not about a competition between God and your family. God wants you to have a rich family life as a result of your personal relationship with him.