We are told in Exodus 20:2-3; I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.   Thou shalt have no other gods before me. But tell me, is God REALLY number one in our life, or do we allow circumstances in our life to take first place?
We are created with five senses; sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, so we make most of our decisions based upon information derived from these senses.  And in doing so, we have a habit of believing our senses over what the Word of God tells us.  The first Commandment plainly says we shall have no other gods before Him.  Think about this for a moment, what about when His Word conflicts with our physical senses?  Do we honor the Word of God over our senses?  Or do we let our senses become “God”?
Well, you know me, I teach about healing quite often.  Do you think it’s possible to receive healing apart from honoring God’s word above all else?  Simply stated, in Psalm 103:2-3, it is written, Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:   Who forgiveth all thine iniquities; who healeth all thy diseases; What about when our body says,” Hey, I know what the Word says, but clearly, I’m not healed.”  We have a definite conflict here, wouldn’t you say?  Obviously, one of the two must be wrong, for we are healed, or we’re not, which is it?  Personally, if I have to put my money on one or the other, I’m going to side with God’s Word every time.  Why?  because it is impossible for God to lie, period.
But aren’t we supposed to believe the senses that God created us with?  Sometimes our body tells us something isn’t right here, and we’re sick, do we deny good information meant to help and protect us from further harm?  You see, most everyone deals with that question.  I said “most everyone”, because I personally don’t.  While reading Psalm 103:2-3, I was dying of liver cancer and melanomas in 1993.  The doctors said that I was going to die real soon, and there wasn’t anything the medical profession could do to stop it.  There was no help whatsoever in the natural realm available to me.  Yet the Word of God said I was healed, so obviously there had to be some mistake. All my physical senses told me God was wrong.  Or was He?
Here was the choice: whether to just die, or give honor unto God above all else, above what my circumstances were, above what my senses were telling me.  I chose to take God at His Word.  Guess what? It’s been almost 20 years now, and I haven’t had a sick day since.  Turns out the doctors and all my senses were wrong.  Yes, I had cancer, but God made it go away.  Now there’s a time to believe your senses: if you’re standing in the freeway and a truck is bearing down on you at seventy miles per hours, your senses will tell you MOVE, and you’d better do it, or die.  There is not chapter and verse concerning you standing in the freeway, so at a time like that, you would do well to obey your senses.  But here’s the point: when you clearly  have chapter and verse from the Bible, even when it appears contrary to your senses, GO WITH THE BIBLE!  Why? because once again, God cannot lie.
Every day we are given the opportunity to choose between what God says, and what our senses tell us.  And when we believe our senses above the Word of God, we are setting ourselves up for hurt, plain and simple.  It may not come that very moment, but it’s coming.  And then when it comes, that’s when people often decide they are finally ready to listen to God.  Imagine how much easier and more pleasant life would be if we would just obey God in the first place, without having to suffer first.  You know, it’s not God’s will you keep getting beat up all the time, He gives us a choice: life and death, blessing and cursing, and He tells us CHOOSE LIFE!  Yet so often, we choose to ignore Him, and then we have the gall to ask GOD, WHY DID YOU LET THIS HAPPEN TO ME??  Don’t blame God when you’ve given Him second place in your life when your first choice left you hanging out to dry.  The vast majority of our problems could be avoided altogether by us honoring God and giving Him absolute supremacy over our lives.  If we gave heed to how God tells us to live, instead of doing it according to our own will, we would avoid most of the pitfalls that we seem to so readily fall victim to.
We become slaves to debt because we want to do it “our way”, instead of bringing our petitions before God and seeing if He wants us to have such and such in the first place.  Get this: God is not against you having stuff, but He is against stuff having YOU, and if you’re in debt, then stuff has YOU, and you’re not free.
Concerning our health, the medical profession has a pill for every ailment, and you take one pill to get rid of one symptom, but it brings three others upon you as a side effect.  So you take more  pills to counteract the symptoms of the first pill, and before you know it, your body is out of control so badly it doesn’t know up from down.  And you wonder why God let you get this way?  Did you ASK GOD before taking that pill?  I’m not saying all medicine is bad, but why not let the Master Physician fix your body?  With about a third of our kids and over half of our adults today on some kind of medicine, it will be very difficult in the future to ever get anyone to rely on God for healing, for they will all rely on medicine instead of God.  How sad that is.  After all, God  created our body, and He knows it better than anyone else, and besides, the doctors are just “practicing medicine”.  Here’s a clue: God isn’t “practicing”.  He has it down pat.
So many times we bend to pressure from what other people try to get us to do, even when we KNOW it goes against God’s word, and that’s about the stupidest thing in the world.  The world doesn’t care about you!  They won’t be there when you stumble and suffer from paying heed to them.  And they won’t take your punishment in the judgment, either.  No, YOU will bear it.  When you put YOUR way up, you’re bringing God’s way DOWN, and both ways can’t be up at the same time, it’s one or the other.  Consider putting God’s way above yours.  You’ll sure be glad you did.  Remember this, when things aren’t working for you, and you think God has left you, look who is on the throne: you, or God?  God said He would neither leave nor forsake you, so if God seems far off, it’s not that He has moved away from you.  YOU HAVE MOVED AWAY FROM HIM!   What’s the solution?  Seek Him with all your heart, and move close to Him.  He says, if you will draw nigh unto Him, He will draw nigh unto YOU.  And that’s what you want!  What are you waiting for??
Jesus said in Luke 6:38, Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again. You may be saying, I can’t give; I’m so broke I can’t even pay attention.  It would be stupid to give away any of my money when I need every penny of it to pay my bills. Ok then, keep your money and keep on doing what you’ve been doing all along. That’s why you’re broke right now in the first place, you were stingy and violated the Word of God.  I’ll tell you what, my friend, if what you’re doing isn’t working for you and getting you where you should be, then change direction and do it God’s way.  It’s called REPENT.  Everyone needs to repent from time to time.  There have been plenty of times I thought I knew better than what the Word of God said I should do, so I followed my “common sense” and suffered the consequences thereof.  It didn’t take too many of those “hard knocks” before I wised up, and decided to do what God said to do instead.  God really DOES have the best way for you, and you’ll enjoy the fruit of it when you honor God above all else!