Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Good morning friends what a busy weekend. We had one saved in our Reformers Unanimous program this Friday, praise the Lord for that soul and I ask that you would pray for her. Friday we had some pretty severe storms pass through and my family received a call @ 5:30 in the morning with some bad news about my wife's grandmother, she is 92 and not doing well. The Lord did take care of it though as she was able to return home from the hospital the next day. On Thursday I said we would pick up with the training of the soldier, so here goes. Every good military has a mission, a vision, and some values that it sticks to and trains for. I want to talk about the following areas over the next few days and try to cover some simplistic things that I believe will help with the training of a soldier as it effects his or her very being. Here are the topics:

• Core Values
• Core Belief
• Core Mission

We will start off with some core values, this will hopefully begin to lay the foundation of why we do what we do, and say what we say when we say it. I would like to tackle core values by looking at the following points in order:

1. Core Values
   a. God First
   b. Service before self
   c. Excellence in all you do for God

The very first and foremost in every Christians life and training is learning to put God first. The Bible states all the way from the Old Testament to the New Testament in the following verses.
Exo 20:3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Exo 20:4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Exo 20:5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, I would like to believe that with these statements our God has made it very clear that he should be first in all things in our life. If we could ever learn to put God first in all things then half of the problems we find ourselves facing because of our own will wouldn't even be an issue. If we could learn to put God first in our homes, in our workplaces, and most definitely in our churches then, and only then will we start to focus on Him rather than circumstances of life. Friends with God first that means every decision you are about to make you will bring before Him, to see if it would glorify Him or not, every circumstance you are about to act upon you will bring before Him, every word you are about to utter out of your mouth, and every thought that rings through your mind. Now you may say preacher that's silly, here's my challenge...try it! If we would put God first then the other half of the things we deal with physically and spiritually would be taken care of because God says in Jeremiah 33:3 Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. My friend, you must put God first in order to do this otherwise you won't even think to call upon Him. The Lord Jesus Christ also echoed this thought in the New Testament when questioned by those that He was dealing with, Mat 22:36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Mat 22:37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. You see friends in order to walk in the Spirit and be spiritually minded God must be first in all things. The first part in training a soldier is that there are certain things of value that you are willing to fight for, and the very core of that, the very beginning of your being to want to stand firm is that God is first in all things! If God is first then when the battle goes to your mind whether you should do one thing or another it won't take long to figure it out, will this honor God or dishonor God. If the battle is with your heart to do your will or God's the battle won't be long, do we value God enough to submit ourselves to Him that His will would be accomplished because He is first? Every action you take while training ought to have this singular purpose behind it.....God First! Tomorrow we will tackle the next step of training, service before self.