First Things First - Soul Choice Ministries

Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all these things will be added onto you.” What things? He was referring to what we eat, what we drink, what we wear, and so forth. I have found that one important thing we must do to show God we’re seeking Him first, is choose to rise up early, read the Bible and pray every morning. It is so important to form this daily habit. I want to share a dream that God gave me to help illustrate this.

In this dream, I was in my home and I could see through the walls. Outside the walls was this green, slimy snake, about a foot in diameter that was trying to get into my home. He was circling around the house relentlessly pounding against the walls. He couldn’t see that there was a wall there so he kept hitting it and hitting it. I looked around and didn’t see any openings, but then I looked to the front door. The front door looked like someone had cut six inches off the bottom of it. I thought, “he’s going to slide through the bottom of the door. He’s going to eventually find that opening.”

Well, he did find the opening and he got into the house. His slime dripped all over the home. He was making a terrible mess in the house and I felt afraid so I ran outside. Once outside I wondered, “What am I doing out here? I’ve got to go back into my house.” I entered back inside and then I woke up.

I prayed and asked the Lord; “What did that dream mean?” He explained that the slimy snake represented the devil of course. He’s trying to get in to destroy our lives, but there’s a hedge of protection around us. Ecclesiastes 10:8 says, “Whoever breaks a hedge, a serpent will bite.” There are many verses about a hedge around us. Job 1, Mark 12:1 and Psalm 80:12 are just a few. God has a hedge about us but we can break our own hedge. The Lord showed me that I was breaking mine.

Let me explain. I went to the gym one day, and the guy next to me hit the weight rack, knocking a weight off. It flew through the air, hit my big toe and broke it. I complained to the Lord and said; “Lord, I pray and I read your word. Why did this happen?” The Lord showed me. He said, ” You’ve had time to go to the gym everyday. You never miss. But, you haven’t had time to read and pray every day.”

I was reading and praying, but I was missing days. As I would miss those days, the space at the bottom of the front door would grow larger. This left an opening so the enemy could get in and attack me. You might be saying, “Bill, come on, that’s legalism.” No, it’s not. In Deuteronomy 6 it explains to us that we should keep the Word in front of our eyes day and night. We should talk about it as we rise up, as we go to sleep, put it as frontlet before our eyes, and so forth. David said in Psalms 119:97, “Oh, how I love thy law. It is my meditation all the day.” He said he prayed and read all day long.

This is a very important lesson for us to learn. It’s a hedge that keeps our heads protected so the enemy can’t hit us. That’s a treasure in God’s Word. We all need to learn to put God first by reading the Bible and praying daily. I encourage you to get in the habit of doing this because God is faithful to keep His Word. He will protect you from the enemy if we’ll keep Him first.