Today, I want to talk with you about something I believe is of utmost importance. The subject of this blog is so important it determines the direction of your whole life and is probably the biggest contributing factor to your success or failure.
I want to talk with you about priorities. A priority is value, goal, relationship, or cause of leading importance in your life. It’s what you live for—what give focus to your life. It’s a value that shapes how you live day to day, moment by moment—for better or worse. A priority what has first claim on your time, energy, and resources. And here’s the thing, a priority can either be consciously chosen or set by outside circumstances. And whether you know it or not, your priorities determine what you achieve in life, your wins and losses, and even your eternal destiny.
I want to share a single verse to you from God’s Holy Word. It spells out my number one priority. It's what I live for and what I try to let direct everything I do. This is why I became a minister. It’s been the guiding force in how I have pastored
every church I’ve served for the last 23 years.
Matthew 6:33
Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
God is good. I already knew God was calling me to be a minister before I finished college. I did not go to college to be a pastor. I was planning to be a textile engineer. It was my plan. But God had a different plan—a better plan.
At first, I tried to ignore God’s plan. My wife didn’t want to be married to a pastor and I didn’t want to give up a promising career in engineering either. So God indulged me. He allowed me to find a job do exactly what I thought I wanted to do. My first job out of college was the director of quality assurance at a textile mill. It's what I wanted to do, but I thought it would take me several years to work up to. But I started in this role right out of college.
The only catch was a one-hour commute to and from work every day. It gave me a lot of time to think and pray. And I soon found my 24-years-old self thinking: Is this what my life is really going to be? I will get up everyday and go to work and help this company make the very best towels they can. And I will come to the end of my life—however many years God gives me—and this is what it will all have been about. And it just felt deep down like something important was missing. It felt meaningless.
So, I would work all day to make money for my family, and then come
home and volunteer at church because that's what I really felt called to
do; it felt like my real purpose and it gave meaning to my life. But we all have the same 24 hours each day and I found working full-time and then volunteering at church and also being
married and having a child was exhausting.
I was doing too many different things and not being effective or fulfilled
at any of them. And that’s when God’s
Holy Spirit led me to Matthew 6:33.
It was as if God Himself were whispering Matthew 6:33 in my
ear: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these other
things will be given to you as well.” And through a season of prayer and discernment, I realized I needed to reorder my
priorities.
For me, Matthew 6:33 states my life’s purpose and my number one priority – Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need. From this priority, I began to reevaluate and reorder my life to make sure everything I do—as much can I help it—supports the top priority of my life. The most dramatic effect was that I decided to leave my career in engineering and become a United Methodist pastor. I officially answered God’s call to be a minister in 1999. I was appointed as a student pastor in December of 2000 and it took me until 2008 to fully complete the process to become a fully ordained elder in 2008.
All along the way, Matthew 6:33 has been my guiding priority—Seek
first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and He will take care of
everything else. And He has. My life is not perfect. My family is
not either. But, I have no regrets about answering God's call and no doubts that we aiming for the right target. Sometimes we hit the bullseye and sometimes we miss. But at least we’re pointing in the right direction.
For the Christian—a person who follows Jesus Christ as Lord—His Kingdom should be our top priority. But there are other priorities that guide our lives. Some other priorities may be: your family, your health, your career, your hobbies, making money, getting recognition, or many other things.
Most of us have more stuff competing for our attention than
we know what to do with. We rarely take time to evaluate our priorities.
We just let life happen. Outside forces set priorities for us.
Your boss tells you what to do and you do it. The company you work for has goals and you strive for them. Marketing companies spend billions of dollars every year to tell us what we want so we’ll
buy their stuff--and we buy it! The social customs of our broken and fallen society shape what we think is
important and we just accept it because, “Hey, it’s what everyone’s doing so it must be right. Right?”
Often, we think our priorities are one thing, but our lives
show they are something else. Our actions don't match values. So if we're honest, we realize it's we're lying to ourselves about what's most important.
Here are some ways to determine what are your real priorities.
What do you think about? What do you day dream about? What do
you plans for most? What do you worry
about? These indicate your priorities because a priority is something you think about a lot.
How do you spend your money? Taylor Swift was in the news a few months ago for the high price of her concert tickets. Tickets were originally $49-$449, but because they sold out so fast, people started reselling them and the average resale cost was $1,605. I don’t know if you would pay $1,000 to go to a concert or not, but what would you pay $1,000 for? What would you pay $10,000 for? The answer tells you a lot about what’s really important to you. In fact, if you go through your bank statement for the last year and figure out what all you spent your money on, it will reveal a lot about your true priorities. Jesus said in Matthew 6:21, “Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.” A priority is something you spend your money on.
How do you spend your time? When I was in college, I had a lot more time than money. That’s not to say I wasn’t busy. It’s just that since money was scarce, time was something I had to give. Now that I’m older and money is not as scarce, time seems much more valuable to me. In fact, quite often I’d just assume pay a little extra for something if it could save me time, because time is more valuable to me now than money. Does that make any sense? Time valuable. You can always make more money, but you can never make more time. So is you are willing to invest your treasured time in something, it is a priority for you. A priority is something you spend your time on.
Now I promised you at the beginning that this blog was of utmost importance. That the subject of this message is so important it determines the direction of your whole life and is probably the biggest contributing factor to your success or failure.
If you feel like you just can win, you can’t succeed, no
matter how hard you try, chances are you’re not focusing on your true priorities. You want this , but you're doing that. You need to either change your actions or change your priorities so they line
up with each other.
If you feel unfulfilled, like your life has little meaning, like
you’re just not making a difference, chances are there’s a problem in your priorities. God has given us all a purpose and a reason for being. God doesn’t make junk. So if He made you, you’re here for a reason. But if you’re living for something else—whether intentionally or unconsciously—you’re not going to feel very fulfilled.
But, there’s nothing more powerful than a person who knows their priorities and intentionally lives them out. It’s like the difference between a soft glowing light bulb and a lazer cutting through metal. A lazer is just light that’s extremely focused.
Most people just sort of wander through life with little or
no direction or intention. And they come to the end having made little difference or at least having less of an impact than they could have. But if you figure out why you're here and you intentionally order your priorities to match your purpose, you will be
like a lazer.
Maybe you need to spend some time evaluating your priorities. What do you think about? What do you spend your money on? What do you invest your time in? Do these things line up with what you think are the priorities of your life?
And what about what God thinks? Are your priorities what you think God wants for you? Do you think your priorities are more important and valuable than God’s? He made you. He designed you and gave you your abilities, quirks, and even your deep desires. He did it on purpose. So you can strive to fulfill His plan—a plan that fits you like a glove, or, you can chase your own selfish desires—which will always feel out of place somehow.
