Putting God First: How to Make Him the Center of Your Life
For much of my early life, I struggled to understand what it meant to have a relationship with God as my Father.
My dad died of a heart attack when I was four years old. I have very few memories of him, so I grew up without experiencing the kind of father-son relationship many people take for granted. When Christians talked about God as our heavenly Father, I understood the words. I knew what the Bible taught. But understanding something intellectually and understanding it through experience are two different things.
That began to change when I became a father myself.
I became a dad at 21. A year later, my wife left me for another man, and I became a single parent at 22. Suddenly, fatherhood wasn’t a theological concept. There was a child depending on me.
Year after year, I began to understand more about what it meant to be a father. A father loves his child even when that child doesn’t deserve it. He provides, protects, teaches, corrects, forgives, and wants what is best for his child. Sometimes he knows something is good for his child when the child can’t possibly understand why.
As I learned what it meant to be an earthly father, I began to understand my heavenly Father differently.
But understanding God better didn’t automatically mean I was putting God first.
That lesson would come later.
I Had to Take an Honest Look at My Life
I had trusted Christ as my Savior when I was six years old during Vacation Bible School. By the time I reached 29, however, I was forced to take a much harder look at the way I was actually living.
I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life as a single parent. I wanted to meet a Christian woman, get married, and build a life together.
Then an uncomfortable realization hit me.
Why was I asking God to bring a godly Christian woman into my life when there wasn’t much about the life I was living that would make a godly Christian woman want to build a life with me?
That question brought me to my knees.
This wasn’t about getting saved again. I had trusted Christ years earlier. The issue was who was actually directing my life.
At 29, I decided I was done trying to run it myself. I rededicated my life to God and essentially told Him, I’ll do what You tell me to do, and I’ll go wherever You lead me.
I couldn’t have known where that decision would take me.
What Does Putting God First Really Mean?
Jesus said:
“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you.” — Matthew 6:33 (CSB)
We sometimes turn that verse into a Christian priority list:
- God
- Family
- Church
- Work
- Everything else
There is some value in thinking about priorities that way, but I don’t believe it captures everything Jesus is saying.
Putting God first isn’t about giving God the first piece of your life. It’s about giving Him the whole thing.
God isn’t supposed to occupy the religious compartment of our lives while we make the rest of our decisions independently. He isn’t someone we visit on Sunday morning before returning to our real lives.
God belongs at the center.
Paul describes that kind of life in Colossians:
“And whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.” — Colossians 3:17 (CSB)
Notice the word whatever.
Our relationship with God should affect our marriages, parenting, careers, finances, friendships, politics, entertainment, schedules, priorities, and decisions.
Everything.
When God becomes the center of your life, the question changes from “What do I want to do?” to “God, what do You want me to do?”
That was the change beginning in me at 29.
God Began Redirecting My Life
About a year after I made that commitment, God’s direction led me to Metropolitan Bible Church.
There I met a Christian woman who was also a single parent. Her name was Wendy Pliscofsky.
We dated for three months, got engaged, and were married on November 29, 1991.
Now, I want to be very careful about the lesson we draw from that story.
I didn’t earn Wendy because I finally started behaving myself. God isn’t a vending machine where we insert obedience and He dispenses whatever blessing we’ve requested.
That’s not Christianity.
What changed when I surrendered my life to God was the direction I was traveling. I had decided that instead of asking God to bless the life I wanted to build, I would follow where He led.
In God’s providence, that path brought Wendy and me together.
Our marriage wasn’t perfect because no marriage is. We had bumps, difficulties, disagreements, challenges, and plenty of opportunities to learn patience with one another. But God gave me someone with whom I could do life—someone who shared my faith and walked alongside me.
God also began opening doors for me to serve Him in ways I had never anticipated. Looking back, I can see a long chain of opportunities, relationships, experiences, and decisions that grew out of a fundamental change in direction.
I stopped asking God to fit into the life I had planned.
I began asking Him to direct it.
Wendy and I shared more than 32 years of marriage. On April 2, 2024, her work here was finished, and God called her home.
Putting God at the center of my life didn’t protect me from pain. It didn’t guarantee an easy marriage, an easy career, financial success, good health, or a life without loss.
Jesus never promised any of those things.
What changed was who I was walking with—and Who was directing where I walked.
Is God Really at the Center?
It’s easy for Christians to say that God comes first.
The harder question is whether our lives provide any evidence that He does.
Paul writes:
“Therefore, brothers and sisters, in view of the mercies of God, I urge you to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God; this is your true worship. Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.” — Romans 12:1–2 (CSB)
A living sacrifice doesn’t give God one hour on Sunday.
It gives Him everything.
So rather than simply asking, “Is God important to me?”, let’s make the question uncomfortable enough to be useful.
Look at your calendar. Where does God appear in the way you spend your time?
Look at your bank account. What does your spending reveal about what you value?
Think about the last major decision you made. How much did God’s Word influence it?
Consider your opinions about politics and culture. Are they being shaped primarily by Scripture, or do you start with your preferred political voices and then look for Bible verses that agree with them?
Think about your family. Does following Christ affect how you treat your spouse, raise your children, resolve conflict, or use your time at home?
Consider your entertainment. Are there things you routinely watch, read, or listen to that you would have difficulty defending as someone trying to honor Christ?
And perhaps the hardest question of all:
When something you want conflicts with what God has said, who wins?
Our answers tell us considerably more about whether we’re putting God first than simply calling ourselves Christians.
God Doesn’t Want a Corner of Your Life
We’ve spent much of the Start at Home series talking about what has gone wrong in our families, churches, government, and culture.
Now we’re talking about what to do about it.
In the previous post, I argued that lasting change doesn’t begin in Washington. It begins much closer to home. But even saying that change starts with the family doesn’t go far enough.
Before a family changes, people have to change.
That means it starts with me.
At 29, I wasn’t looking for a theology lesson. I wanted my life to be different. Eventually I realized I couldn’t keep directing my own life while asking God to give me the results I wanted.
Something had to change.
I did.
Not perfectly. Not overnight. And certainly not without taking some wrong turns afterward.
But the direction of my life changed when I stopped treating God as someone who should bless my plans and began surrendering my plans to Him.
That’s what putting God first ultimately means.
He doesn’t simply become number one on the list.
He becomes the center from which everything else in life is ordered.
But How Do I Know Where God Wants Me to Go?
There is an obvious problem with saying, “God, I’ll do whatever You tell me to do.”
How do we know what He’s telling us?
We can easily confuse God’s direction with our feelings, preferences, circumstances, or what we desperately want Him to say.
Thankfully, God hasn’t left us to figure out His will entirely on our own.
He has given us His Word.
If we’re serious about putting God at the center of our lives, we have to know what He has actually said. That means the Bible cannot remain something sitting on a shelf waiting for Sunday morning.
It has to become part of our everyday lives.
And if you’ve tried to develop a regular Bible-reading habit before and failed, you’re certainly not alone.
That’s where we’re going next.
Keep Growing: Put God at the Center
Putting God first isn’t a one-time decision. It’s a daily choice to let Him shape our priorities, decisions, relationships, and direction. None of us will do that perfectly, but we can keep taking the next faithful step.
Continue the Start at Home series. This post is part of Start at Home: Why Your Kitchen Table Matters More Than Washington Ever Will. We’ve moved from diagnosing what has gone wrong in our culture to looking at what we can actually do about it. Read the entire Start at Home series.
Listen to the Disciple Blueprint Podcast. Each week, we take the biblical principles from the Start at Home series deeper and talk about what they look like in everyday Christian life. Look for the Disciple Blueprint Podcast on your favorite podcast platform or at https://www.discipleblueprint.com/podcast.
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Putting God at the center changes more than our Sunday mornings. It changes the direction of our lives.
