new release April 2014
Review:
Stovall Weems’ Celebration Church in Jacksonville, Florida advertises with four words: “Your life, God’s way.” He believes “God has a way for our lives… God’s way for your life IS the best possible way you can live” (Stovall Weems, The God-First Life, Zondervan, new release 2014, pp. 14-15). His book just released—The God-First Life—is a clear, practical explanation of what the God-first life looks like. It is very helpful for young believers and all those who believe in Jesus Christ but need to know how to live as fully committed disciples.
M.L. Codman-Wilson 4/10/14
Excerpts:
New Family
“When
we come into God’s family through Jesus, the church becomes our primary family…
You cannot go far in your life of faith until you come to understand and
embrace this amazing reality… Your position in God’s family is secure, but we
seek his kingdom first by fulfilling our function in his family,” (pp. 36, 37, 42).“The local church is the soil necessary for your life to flourish…. Being planted in God’s house is part of God’s revealed will… Many people never flourish…because they see ‘planting’ as optional…In the life of every plant there are seasons of dormancy, seasons for growth and seasons for harvest…Somehow I think we have come to expect every season to be one of harvest…When you can’t see visible progress, we start getting restless. We think something must be wrong with the soil so we uproot…and replant, interrupting our life cycle in the house of God. Any church we join is going to be imperfect because it’s full of people like us, but you cannot be a fully functioning member of his family without being planted in a local church” (pp. 46-51).
“Doing the journey by yourself is not…part of putting God first. He has something better in mind for us by way of fellowship, community and connection. As we do life together with others who love Jesus, it helps us put the priorities in our lives in the right order and opens us to the blessing God desires to give” (p. 54).
“True community occurs face to face. It takes intentional time and effort. To walk in deep relationships with other men and women will require energy… True community is valuable because it comes at a price, it doesn’t happen overnight or by accident. True community must be prioritized, pursued, and fought for. To experience it in its fullest and richest form means that we will have to surrender our rights and sacrifice for it sometimes. Living in true community… is God’s way of building his church and forming Christ in us” (pp. 62-63).
New Life
“We seek God’s righteousness—His right and healthy of way of doing things—by reordering our lives around His priorities…Seeking righteousness involves a long term commitment to total, personal transformation… In a God-first life, the decisions you make in your heart should manifest themselves in your outer world. Your life should start taking shape in a way that shows who is first in a real, concrete way” (pp.72, 74).
“The important thing is to stay connected to the source of our new life. Paul calls it ‘being filled with the Spirit.’ We receive the Spirit when we’re saved, but staying filled is not a onetime event. It can be, and needs to be, a daily experience, a lifestyle… If we are filled with the Holy Spirit, that’s what will flow from us. We were created for overflow. Whatever you fill up on, that’s what’s going to flow out of you… If you fill up on the love of money… you’re going to overflow with greed. But if you fill up with the presence of God you’re going to overflow with the fruit of the Spirit… Until we make a conscious choice to surrender our will to God’s will and yield to the power of the Holy Spirit within us, we will continue to choose, act, and behave just as we did before we got saved.
Putting God first means you’re willing to surrender your own will so that God’s will (revealed in his Word and confirmed by his Spirit) takes over the reins of your life. Only when you do that will you see transformation occur in your thinking, behaving, and choosing. Strongholds of sin will be broken. Patterns of behavior will be eradicated. Wounds will be healed” (pp.75-77).
“Staying filled is a decision… not a choice. Decisions… are more final, even once and for all… You experience the God-first life by making one-time decisions to establish God’s will and ways in your life. These one-time decisions are not to be re-decided daily but are to be managed and protected for the rest of your life. Seven one-time decisions we need to make are:
·
I will make God’s
family my primary family
·
I will engage in
the community life of the church
·
I will be filled
by the Spirit
·
I will worship
God on my own and with my church family
·
I will spend time
with God through prayer and his Word
·
I will give of
myself and my means
·
I will experience
the freedom, joy, and blessing that God offers” (pp. 78-80).
Worship
“Worship is absolutely necessary for living life God’s way and putting him high above all else in our lives… Worship is about engaging God with our bodies, which leads to an encounter with God in our minds from which we experience God in our souls” (pp. 82-92).
“When you sing songs that declare truth about God—his love, faithfulness, goodness, and glory—it changes how you see your circumstances. The Bible describes this as magnifying the Lord. When we magnify something, we make it fill more of our focus, take more of our attention, occupy more of our mind… When we magnify God through worship in that moment He is the most important thing in our lives. He is first. And in comparison to His greatness our problems don’t seem so big. When we bring Him into focus, it puts everything else in perspective” (p. 94).
Scripture Reading and Prayer
“A huge part of putting God first… is taking the
responsibility to pray and to study God’s Word for yourself throughout the
week. Getting to know him better is how you know how to change your life so you
can start living according to His ways” (p.
98).
“The Bible says “Do not conform to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:1, 2). When something is conformed, the same substance is molded into a new shape but when something is transformed, it becomes a difference substance altogether…Transformation starts with changing how you think… We choose to believe in and respond to the reflection we see in God’s Word and in doing so we establish his patterns of righteousness in our lives.” Personal devotion is the daily practice of making room in your life to seek God through prayer and reading the Scripture” (pp. 108-110).
Serving
Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant” (Matthew 20:26)… Serving others starts with a shift in how we see ourselves. The God-first life means, among other things, laying down the privileges we have come to expect and being willing to see ourselves as servants first…Serving is taking on the character of Jesus—setting aside our own goals, aims, and desires, and giving our time, talent, money, sweat, heart, and strength for the kingdom” (pp.115, 118-119).
“God is a sender…If the God-first life is about fulfilling the plans and purposes of God, then it means accepting the commission [to be sent out] to reach the lost, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the infirm, and reach the world…Jesus’ mission on earth was to make an eternal impact in the life of every person” (p. 124).
Tithing
“We have the honor of partnering with God to rescue humanity and we step into that partnership when we recognize that advancing the gospel and reaching the lost requires resources… Here are things I like people to keep in mind about tithing:
·
Tithing reminds
us that the earth and everything in it belongs to God…This means that you are
not an owner, but a steward of everything you have.
·
Tithing is not
only 10% of our income, it’s the first 10%.
·
The tithe is the
“sacred portion” and has tremendous power.
·
Tithing is not
giving, it’s returning. It’s an issue of obedience.
·
Your tithe is
given to your local church, the place where you’re planted, the place of your
spiritual family where you’re serving and growing.
·
God established
tithing to be a win-win-win situation. God wins because he receives your
worship through giving. You win because giving draws you into relationship with
Jesus as Lord. The church wins because the gospel can now be advanced” (pp. 127, 129-132).
New Freedom
“Freedom in the God-first life is all about your new inner
freedom working its way out into the rest of your life. The first principle of
God-first freedom is freedom from the past… The degree and scope of our sin and
the effort it takes to overcome the old nature will greatly depend on how
embedded our patterns of sinful thinking and behaving truly are. Putting God
first means letting the Holy Spirit sift through the triggers for sin that have
been shaped by our experiences…. Tendencies toward wrong thinking, wrong
behaving, and wrong choosing can run deep…We have to access the power of God
within us to break old patterns, eradicate sin, reshape our thinking, and walk
in freedom” (pp. 137-139).
“The second principle of God-first freedom is freedom in the present… For the mature believer, a constant struggle against our flesh… begins with some type of fear… Healthy fear is meant to protect you, not enslave you… But fear generated by the adrenaline of dangerous circumstances is quite different from the fear we generate in our minds by indulging our doubts and disbelief that God will come through for us… Many Christians misinterpret “do not be afraid” to mean they should not feel fear or that they should have no reason for fear… It’s impossible to control the emotion of fear when it comes upon you. God does not expect us to suddenly stop feeling fear… The presence of God in us, the presence of his perfect love, is the power we need to dispel fear” (pp. 141-143).