The Right Order

“Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men.”  Romans 1:22-23

I spent last weekend with a group of fantastic middle school students at a winter youth retreat.  Our time was filled with much laughter, good music, great teaching, crazy pranks, a midnight Wal-Mart run, and many questions.  The one I was asked the most was simple but vital—“What comes next?”  The kids’ desire to be at the right place at the right time to do the right thing showed that they are learning a very important truth—if the order gets mixed up, life gets messed up.

Though some would disagree, our lives are not like the Legos of my childhood whose various shapes and sizes had no specific place or purpose but were simply available to be placed at any position by my will or want. Instead, the rhyme and reason of our existence mirrors the toys I purchased this past Christmas.   In each box, every Lego, big or small, is part of a definite design, and all the pieces must be placed in the proper order or what you’re making gets messed up.

In the grand design of life, the same holds true.  God and His glory must be first, or else all that follows will end in failure—moral failure, relational failure, and, eventually, eternal failure.  The Bible states that God’s existence is evident in creation, but though people knew that God is real, “they neither glorified him as God or gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened(Romans 1:21).  In arrogance, men (and women) chose (and choose) to “exchange the glory of the immortal God” for images of stuff He has made—flimsy and fleeting shadows which have no substance by themselves.  We mix the order up.

And life gets messed up.  Our vanity makes us think that putting who we are and what we want before who God is and what He desires will bring fulfillment, significance, and success, but to the contrary, this prideful pursuit of our own pleasure causes God to let us “have what we want” and we are given over to “shameful lusts, a depraved mind, and receive the due penalty for perversion”(Romans 1:26-27).  We “become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity…full of envy, murder, strife, decide, and malice…gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; we invent ways of doing evil; disobey parents; are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless”(Romans 1:29-31).      

This list is horrible and hard to read, but it accurately describes our individual lives and our collective culture when we refuse to submit to the rule of a sovereign God and when we live to make ourselves look and feel good—not show and share His glory.  Even as Christ-followers, when we mix the order up, life gets messed up. 

The essential question, “What comes next?” should always be preceded by the vital question, “Who comes first?”  And the only right answer—all the time, every time—is God.