The First Commandment

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

This is the first of the 10 commandments given to the Jewish people by God. The Jewish people, then called the house of Isreal, were the main recipients of the commandments. They were meant to be the rules for which God’s chosen people were to structure their lives by.

This first one is by far the most important and the one upon which all the others that follow are hinged upon. I suppose it makes sense. If God isn’t God, or not the preeminent god, why would it be necessary to follow the other 9 following commands?

What does it mean to have another god before Him? All it simply means is that you don’t recognize Yahweh for who He is and make a choice that something else is more important. That choice could be active in that you make a firm choice that He will not be your God. It could also be passive in that you just go about your life without acknowledging Him as your God.

What it also means is that for those who choose to believe is that in everything you do, you acknowledge Him. That means thanking Him, and Praising him in both good times and bad. It means trusting in Him like a little child trusts, without question or debate. It means putting your well being into His hands and trusting that if you follow His ways, all of your needs will be met. It means believing that He will pull you through, even in the darkest of hours.

Today we have so many choices as what to believe. There are many other religions, you could choose no be not religious. You could follow teachings of men like L Ron Hubbard or the myriad of other guru’s who promote the self as the ultimate being. You could be an evolutionist and believe that we are just randomly formed and only the strongest survive and thrive. There are literally millions of options.

All those choices can be boiled down to one simple choice when it comes to this, the first commandment. Believe it or not. No one can make that choice for you. No one can coerce you into believing or not. No one can change your mind. Also, no one else will have to answer for that choice but yourself.

If God is just a mythical being, well, then there is nothing to worry about and I am just wasting my life for nothing. If God is who He says he is, then an eternity hangs in the balance on what choice you make. As for me and my house, I choose to serve the Lord.