First Place

"If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”—Luke 14:26

If God is not first place in our life, then He has no place at all.  To minimalize God, to fail to give Him anything else than what He is due, is to fail in understanding who He really is and what He has done to provide salvation for us.  Anything that attempts to take first place in our life other than God is an idol.

What is an idol?  Some think of an idol as an object of veneration or worship in a foreign land, but idolatry is much greater and more subtle than statues and pagan temples.  An idol is anything that takes the place of God, anything that is the supreme object of our affection, and anything that controls our joy.  We build up everything around the idol and let the idol dictate our joy in life.  An alcoholic makes an idol of alcohol and his or her life is spent in gratifying their flesh by indulging in drink.  We can make an idol of anything—food, looks, strength, success, and power.  We can even make an idol of family.  As R.A. Torrey, a Christian writer from the early twentieth century wrote,

“God alone has the right to the supreme place in our hearts.  Everything and everyone else must be subordinate to Him.

Many a man makes an idol of his wife.  A man cannot love his wife too much, but he can put her in the wrong place; he can put her before God.  When a man regards his wife's pleasure before God's pleasure, when he gives her the first place and God the second place, his wife is an idol.  He will have unanswered prayer because God will not hear his prayers.

Many a woman makes an idol of her children.  Not that we can love our children too much.  The more dearly we love Christ, the more dearly we love our children; but we can put our children in the wrong place, we can put them before God, and their interests before God's interests.  When we do this, our children are our idols.  Many a man makes an idol of his reputation or his business.  Reputation or business is put before God. God cannot hear the prayers of such a man.

One great question for us to decide, if we are to have power in prayer is this, is God absolutely first?   Is He before wife, before children, before reputation, before business, before our own lives?  If not, answered prayer is impossible.

God often calls our attention to the fact that we have an idol, by not answering our prayers, and thus leading us to inquire as to why our prayers are not answered; and so we discover the idol, put it away, and God hears our prayers.”—R.A. Torrey, How to Pray, p. 80-81.

This is what Jesus was referring to when He said, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.”  It is not that we have to actually “hate” our families, because that would be in complete contradiction to God’s commands to love our spouses and children.  No, Christ is using hyperbole, intentional overstatement, whereby we understand that in comparison to our love for Him, we must hate our families.  Nothing can take the place of our love for Christ.

God demands first place in our lives, because He is divinely jealous for what is best for us, which is—Himself.  He alone is worthy of our affections and deserving of our supreme loyalty and it is to our joy and His glory for us to remove the idols of our heart.  May God give us the strength, courage, and resolve to remove or realign our priorities so that He is the supreme delight of our hearts.  Amen.