Exodus 20:1-3 (ESV)

And God spoke all these words, saying, “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.  “You shall have no other gods before me.

I remember one Sunday morning when I was a teenager, my brothers and I were walking along a small dirt road on our way back to camp during deer season.  A pickup truck pulled up alongside of us and Angelo Chiocchi, an older local man,  rolled down his window and asked, “where’s your dad this morning?”. We answered he was in church.  To that Angelo laughed and said, “your dad is the only man I know that can kill a buck while sitting in a pew”. And he drove away still laughing.  That was forty years ago but it has stuck with me.  I’m not sure what the rest of us were doing out of church that morning, but dad was there.

I’ve had so many people tell me that they don’t need to go to a church because they worship in their boat or in the woods.  And I agree that worshipping in these places can be a great time with God.  But when we allow our passion to take first place it becomes a problem.

I’ve known people that love their job and they truly find their importance in their work.  Like hunting, fishing or other hobby, there is nothing wrong with loving your job, however, when we quit working to live and start living to work again we have a problem.

When our work, our passion, our family, our hobbies or anything else gets in the way of our relationship with God we have a Big Problem… A sin problem.  We’ve allowed other thing to take God’s place in our lives.

I’m not suggesting that you can’t miss church to be hunting or fishing with your family or friends.  What I am saying is when we forget where our importance comes from, God, and start making other things more important than Him, we are out of line.

Exodus 20:3 (above) is the very first of the 10 commandments and if we allow anything to get in our way of following this one, the others will quickly fall as well.

In the book of Matthew, Jesus said something about our desires that should effect what we keep number one in our lives.

Matthew 6:33 (ESV)

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Keep God first and He will supply the rest.