The First Commandment

So let's take a look at the first commandment.
-Worship God above all things
This seems simple enough- because God created us and everything good for us, we should respect him above all else. Yet for many, this is the most difficult commandment to follow. To respect God above all else is to put him before absolutely everything else in your life. God must be more important than your family, friends, spouse, country, exc. For many it is hard to hear this, but I must stress to you that God's way is the right and perfect way. We must simply trust our all-knowing Father.
To help me understand this, a priest once told me a story about a young girl that went something like this:
A young girl was standing next to the casket at her mother's funeral. The little girl looked at her dead mother, then turned to her father and said, "Daddy, why did God let Mommy die?"
Her father looked at her, picked up a piece of needlework that was close by, and said, "What can you see here?"
The girl looked at the bottom of the needlework, which was matted with knots and ties and tangles, and said, "I don't know."
Her father said, "This is what we see." He then flipped the needlework over to show his daughter the beautiful picture on its front. "This is what God sees."
This story shows that we must trust in God and His ways because he sees all and knows all; whereas we are merely human.
But the young girl's question brings up another- Why, if God is perfect and loves us, does He allow for bad things to happen? The truth of the matter is, it isn't God who made those bad things. It's the devil. And instead of asking God how such a horrible thing could have happened, we should really be cursing Satan for causing the horrible thing. And when something bad happens, we have a choice.
We can pray to God for strength to get us through the bad time. We can ask Him to help us understand why that bad thing happened. We can forgive those who did that bad thing to us. We can praise God that we survived that bad thing.
Or...
We could renounce God's name. We could forget Him and turn away. We could allow the one who caused the bad thing, Satan, to win. By getting us to turn away from God, Satan succeeds in getting what he wanted all along- for us to forget God. I don't know about you, but I am sure not going to let the one who causes all my misery win.
But I'm not saying that putting God above all else is easy. It's not. You have to be strong, brave, and smart. You have to be able to love with all your heat, soul, and mind. You have to have strength beyond modern day strength (if someone punches you what's harder to do, punch them back or smile and walk away?) But the end result of a perfect eternal life will be well worth it.
Eternal adj.-lasting forever; always existing, perpetual; ceaseless; endless
Imagine that our eternal life was a library. Our current lives that we are living right now would not even be as long as a period on the end of a sentence in one of the library books. So we might as well try all we can now so that we may live forever. We may as well put up with a little suffering now to gain eternal happiness. As one of the Haitian prayers in the book God is no Stranger says:
'If we are alive today in spite of hunger, hurricanes, and sickness, we should say, "Thank you Lord. We must be here for a purpose." '
And that purpose is to follow God.

Introduction

I don't understand how a person could not want to be Christian.
I know that anyone could come up with dozens of ill-formed excuses, but if a person really and truly researched what it meant to follow Christ, they could not possibly ignore Him. He is simply too wonderful.
Yet people do. They make lame excuses to get out of worship. Being a teenager, I know that one of the most common excuses that I've heard for not following Jesus is the fact that "you have to follow rules." In modern day society, nobody wants to do things when they are told to do them; we want to do things when we decide that we want to do them. Especially us Americans.
Yet when I hear the "rules" complaint, I always find it an interesting, if ill-prepared, excuse. We always, no matter what we do, must comply to rules. Rules in school, in society, even in our own homes. Some of these rules are wonderful ideas, others, questionable or downright bad. Yet the rules of God are all perfect.
Perfect adj. -entirely without any flaws, defects, or shortcomings
And while our lives are drowning in a suffocating flood of thousands of rules, God only gives us ten. Just ten.

-Worship God above all things
-Do not worship false Gods
-Do not take the Lord's name in vain
(don't say 'God' unless you're talking about Him)
-Keep the Sabbath holy
(go to church on Sunday)
-Honor your father and mother
-You shall not kill
-You shall not commit adultery
-You shall not steal
-You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor
(don't lie)
-You shall not covet your neighbor's possessions

All of these rules come from God, delivered to Moses on Mt. Sinai. All of these rules are perfect. So why should we not adhere to them? God gives us these rules so that we may be happy and live eternally. And though He has the power to make us follow Him, he lets us choose.
Why? Because he loves us enough to give us the freedom to decide our own fate. It is as if He is the coach, telling us the rules to a game. When you know the rules and then go onto the field to compete, you are much more likely to win than those who do not know the rules. Those who run around recklessly without rules to guide them are unhappy and dangerous not only to others, but to themselves. Those who know the rules are God's followers, and they go out onto the field of the world to win the prize of heaven. Those who do not know the rules are those who choose to ignore God's call, and they try to play the game without knowing its purpose. They search for the meaning of life, yet they only have to look to the rules to find them. God is the meaning of life.
Still wary of the rules? Are you tentative to follow them because you cannot bring yourself to believe? Then I shall tell you how to believe.
Pray.
Look to your heart.
Research the proof of God's miracles.
Think.
There are certain things each human is born with, certain values we so not have to be taught, but already know. Killing, lying, stealing, being disrespectful, all of these are wrong. And all of these things are covered int the ten commandments. How can we possibly be born knowing these things unless God, our creator, placed the knowledge in out souls?

The Beginning

Welcome! This blog is pretty much just a way to get my views about God and my religion out there. I just want to share the good news of God with everyone. To those who are already Christians and enjoy discussion, welcome! To those who are not Christians and wish to ask questions about God and his ways, welcome! I will be posting every Sunday, and maybe a bit during the week, depending on how busy I am. Feel free to ask any questions you have about what I've posted, quoted, or anything about God in general. Thanks for reading!