THE STRIPPED CLUB

There's an old song that talks about coming back to the heart of worship. The beginning lyrics are 'When the music fades// all is stripped away// and I simply come.' The message of the song is simply this: When you strip everything else away; when there's nothing else left; when it's just you, is God still first in your life?
In Matthew 6:33 Jesus tells us to 'Seek the Kingdom of God above else...'. This doesn't mean that we wake up a 4am to pray every morning, or that we fast for 40 days a month, or that we christian-lingoify our conversation. That kind of thinking is box thinking. I've got a family box, a work box, a money box, and out of all the boxes, God's going to be the biggest. The trouble with box-thinking is that when our life grows in one area, as it should, time has to be taken from another. 

Have you ever seen the movie Click? It's a film about a guy who lives by box-thinking. He has a family box and a work box. But because his work box is so large, his family box is tiny and it means his misses out on the best parts of his life.
So what does it mean to seek the Kingdom of God above else? It's not about time. It's about priority. Ask yourself this question: Is God number one in every area of my life? 'Above else' means that the decisions I make are based on my relationship with God. Simple. That's why it's so important to keep our relationship with God healthy and growing. Everything else in life will flow from that. If we are spiritually healthy then we will have health in every other sphere of life. Who wouldn't want that?

Karl