Seek ye first . . .

Seek ye first the Kingdom of God. You're either thinking about the song or the passage in Matthew. I remember a time before I answered the call to preach. I got to a point that I just had to get away from everything. I went camping. I went to Fall Creek Falls, a lovely place. So, I thought I would go for a bike ride and take it all in. When I left it was daylight, and I rode about five miles, and then I realized that dark would soon catch me. So, I did my best to get back to my camp site before dark, with no tent set up. Since I hadn't camped before, I didn't have any idea how to set up a tent. Fortunately, the neighbors up the way helped me set up my tent, and invited me to sit by their fire for a while. Oh yeah, all of this was in late October. In my whole family, we only had two sleeping bags; one with a busted zipper. Guess which one I took with me. It got down to forty degrees that night. The ground was cold an hard, needless to say I didn't sleep much that night. To say that I was unprepared would be a huge understatement. I had no idea what I was doing. But eventually, my long cold night ended. As the day started breaking through the trees, having abandoned my tent and trying to warm up in my car, I read the sixth chapter of Matthew. Then I read, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." The next day I surrendered to preach and lived happily ever after. Not exactly, but I realized that I needed to put what God wanted ahead of what I wanted. And I did, and that eventually led to my answering the call to preach, and that led to a complete change in my life. God is good, and I still need to put what He wants ahead of what I want.