What does 'seek first the kingdom of God' actually mean for my life?

Christ says in verse 33, but seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. So many times I hear from people, well, Father, I cannot go to church because I have to go to work, or I do not have time for prayers. I do not argue with people, and I certainly do not chastise them. That would not be helpful or healthy.

But we have to understand the right biblical mindset that Christ has given us: seek first righteousness, our character, our relationship with Christ, our prayer life, our fasting, the liturgy, our participation in church. Seek first that, and everything else is going to come together in its own timing. Will I ever be a millionaire? I do not know, and I also do not really care.

Will I ever be able to retire one day? Who knows? It is somewhere in the future, and that future may not even exist. My job is to seek first the cultivation of my relationship with Christ. That is my starting point in life. If I seek that first, everything else will figure itself out, and it will figure itself out in a way that God sees fit, because he is my father, and he is dedicated to taking care of me.

If everything with my family and my kids and the church depends on me, on Moses, it is just going to be awful, awful for me, and the trickle-down effect is that it will be awful for everybody else. I have to release control of my life and put it into the hands of Christ, because if I do not, I am not cultivating the mindset he wants me to cultivate. That mindset is one of dependence and faith.

It does not mean I will not go through hard times. It does not mean I will not suffer. All of the saints suffered. All of the saints went through hard times. It does not mean everything is going to go my way. But God is God. He is not a vending machine. He is a father, and he knows what is best for me and for the course of my life. There was a point where I had to move multiple times in a several year period.

And you know what? It was okay. Did it make sense at the time? Some of it did not make any sense. Does it make sense looking back? I can totally see the hand of God shaping and changing and growing my character, my disposition toward him, my attitude, building maturity within my soul. Those struggles, those hard times, are what form and shape us. We all want the easy times, and we all want everything laid out in advance for us, and that is just not reality.

Our life with God is going to be a struggle if we fight against what God is trying to accomplish in our life. Fundamentally, he is trying to cultivate us so that we become like him. Christ came and walked on the earth and had basically no possessions, one set of clothing. Every single one of us lives more luxuriously than Christ did, and he is God of the universe. Think about that.