Life`s Priorities

I recently picked up a book and read the strap line under the title. It said, “God, Family, Country”. This reminded me of how we often like to set priorities in life – we’ll put God first, then our family and then our work, ministry or in the above case, our country. Others may change the priority and have God, work/ministry and then family. However, this isn’t how God wants us to manage our lives and the Scripture for today confirms this. We are simply to put God first.

The truth is that when we fully surrender to God and love Him with our whole heart He will direct our paths, and His paths don’t fit any of the moulds or priority lists that we might try to create. One day He may ask us to make a ‘sacrifice’ of family time so that we can serve Him in ministry but another day He may ask us to ‘sacrifice’ ministry time so that we can be with family. I deliberately used quote marks around the word ‘sacrifice’ because if we are truly following the Lord it can’t be a loss to us but rather a gain. If we are following the Lord we can trust that He will take care of our family while we are serving Him in ministry and while we are with our family we can expect that He will take care of the ministry we are involved in. Jesus did the same thing. At one moment he would take time away from the crowds to spend with the disciples and at another He would be ministering to those in need – regardless of how tired He felt.

So, God is only asking one thing from us… Everything! Let’s make that commitment in our heart to follow Him completely and to put Him first. Let’s allow Him to order the priorities of our lives so that we can know peace and blessing in all that we do.

Prayer: Lord, we often like to take charge and to organise our lives in a way that makes sense to us. Help us, Father, to allow You to be in control. We’re willing to be used by You in whatever way you see fit, in Jesus’ name, Amen.