by Anita Keagy, JoyShop Ministries
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear ... but seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." Matthew 6:25 & 33
I will never forget the day when Jesus got my attention as I cried out to Him for abundant life. Up to that point I was living the lifestyle of a hamster running on the ever-spinning wheel! I was tired of worrying about my life, my husband's and children's spiritual lives, as well as keeping up with all the responsibilities that continually filled my day. It was one big burden!
As I looked to the heavens and asked God for the abundant life promised in John 10:10, He immediately brought Matthew 6:33 to my mind. I heard His whisper over my anxious heart, "Anita, you have been living life backwards for many years. Every day you wake up, your day is about you and all you feel you need to get done. You are always trying to squeeze some time with Me and reading my Word into your busy schedule and it's not working. Every day your first priority is to be Me! Time alone with Me and My written Word should be the most important accomplishment for the day. Plan your other activities and many responsibilities around our time together! If you live a lifestyle of seeking Me FIRST, then you can be sure that all the things that you are worried about will be taken care of by Me!"
All of a sudden I saw the truth of how I was living. My daily focus was on all I had to get done that day along with worry and anxieties over the future. But God was asking me to change my focus to seeking intimacy with Him first and then leaving the future to Him.
But what does it really mean to seek first His kingdom? To answer this question I grabbed a dictionary and looked up the key words of this verse.
To "seek" means "to look for, to search intently for, to want to find"! I had to get honest with myself and ask the hard questions: Am I really looking for God? Do I take the time to search for Him? Do I really want to find Him?
Next I looked up the word "first." It is defined as, "Earliest in time or order, foremost in position, rank, or importance." To seek God first means that I will either do it first thing in the morning before I start my day or that I will organize my day around my time with Him! What part of "first" do I not get? First is first!
The word "kingdom" is defined as "a realm where the king's word has full sway." What the king desires is what happens. Every time I open my Bible, I am putting my heart under His sway where my King can get what He desires from my life!
For me, choosing a lifestyle of seeking God FIRST means that every day I am given the gift of waking up, I'm going to begin my day with Him. He is all that matters!
Tweet this! I'm going to begin my day with Him. He is all that matters!
Everything else will fall into place. I want to know Him, find Him and keep seeking intimacy with Him. I have been actively living a lifestyle of seeking God FIRST since that day. This simple discipline has brought the abundant life of Christ and His joy back into my heart! Only one thing is needed: order your day around intimacy with God!
Anita Keagy founded JoyShop Ministries in 2006 with one simple mission: To get people to spend time with God every day through Bible reading and prayer. Since then, she has traveled nationwide and internationally, sharing her message of seeking God first each day as the key to abundant life and joy. Thousands of people have heard and responded to her dynamic message at conferences, retreats, schools and churches.
With a compelling story of how God used a very difficult situation in her life for His glory, Anita shares candidly how she became pregnant as a teenager – all the more “scandalous” because she was a preacher’s daughter – and made the difficult choice to place her daughter for adoption. With tremendous support from family, she heroically bore her child and made an adoption plan. Anita never stopped yearning to know her first-born daughter, even as she married and had four more children. Through a file of letters and the help of her adoption agency, Anita finally met her firstborn 21 years later. God used Anita’s own desire to know her child to impress upon her how much He wants to know His children – us! With that knowledge, a ministry was born that is now thriving and impacting lives every day.
Discover more at www.joyshop.org.
