Aug 27 2017 Priorities: Should God be Your First Priority?

by Mike Marette

Help us Lord, to bring You into the lives of others. Help us to do that – to go out from this place to bring Your love to the people of the world.

Today we are starting a new series on priorities – not a great name, but the only word I could find to describe it – we want it to be helpful and practical – faith, family, jobs, physical health, rest...

Richard Swenson – in his book, Margin – describes our culture and the people living in it as ‘time desperate’ – I think we can resonate with that – being desperate for more time. I’m sure some of us – even this week, where you have been desperate just getting some of the requirements done – where it was just too difficult simply to get done what is required. We are busy people – and we all know that – it is a reality – in our culture – we have become extraordinarily busy –

Without denying we are busy – I think it is amazing that half of America – on Monday – 170 million people – found a few hours to watch the eclipse. Yes – we are busy – but maybe not as busy as we think.

Every invention – all of our new technology made to make life easier, has the opposite effect - they end up making us busier.

A prime example – the smart phone! Think how convenient – can do emails, social media, Facebook – banking – can swipe at Starbucks! There was a lady – slightly older – had her boarding pass – in the prescreening – and could not find it on her phone. We have these things that are so right here – in our hands, pockets, wherever – and this thing – this little device – this time-saving device constantly demands your time and attention – that which is supposed to save you time – demands your attention and consumes your time! It is more demanding than a newborn!

Doesn’t that just seem the way things go?

Because we live in a time-desperate world, we need more than time management skills. You can be the best time manager in the world and not be a great person. We all know those.

The goal is not to just have time management – but to become better people

The story of the Good Samaritan – tells us – there are those who were great with priorities – a Levite and a Priest – who were going down the street doing important spiritual things. And they come across a wounded soul along the side of the road – but they were too busy. Then comes the Samaritan – and he was probably a business man with his priorities – but not too important to stop and help.

Cindy and I were heading to Columbus – and we passed by someone on Bath Road – and there was a woman with a bicycle, sitting in the grass – and we passed by and Cindy said – I think she is in trouble…

Is there a greater priority than going to see your grandchildren? The correct answer is NO! But then again, I’m a pastor and at times I have to teach on The Good Samaritan, and you are stuck in the story and you have a priority – and it begins to eat at you – and so we turned around. She was fine. We gave her some water. And then we were able to go on. The goal is not simply to keep our priorities.

Last weekend – my son and daughter-in-law were here – and we were heading to Blossom – and there were some young kids walking along the four lane road – and the one starts to walk out in the street – and the older pulls her back. We were already late for Blossom – but we turned around. When you are too busy – it is easy to not do that which is good.

Jesus said – if you are presenting your offering before the altar - doing the most important religious act you could do, and you have something against a brother or sister – STOP – go and get the relationship right – and then do your religious activities .

Time management focuses on getting ahead and succeeding. But there is a good and a bad side to that.

We will focus on priorities, but not in the business sense of doing priorities. There is a difference from business priorities – getting a job done – and what I would call life priorities – Life priorities focus on doing that which is important and that which is GOOD. That is an important word. We should focus our priorities on doing the good thing - Good for our well-being – physically, relationally, emotionally and spiritually. That is what priorities are about.

Matthew 11: 28 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

It is easy to feel guilty when we talk about priorities – I want to take guilt out of this – I want to talk about how to live your life under the easy yoke – the light burden. That is what this is about. Everyone would want their burden to be light – to be lessened – lighter – their yoke (There is a difference between the easy yoke and the easy way out). Jesus wants us to lighten our load.

Maybe a better title would be - How to live under the Easy Yoke – How to live with a Light Burden.

Soul Keeping - The most important thing you give to God is the person you become – Ortberg.

In this series – that is what we will focus on – how do we do that – spiritually, relationally, emotionally and physically – how do we live under the easy yoke – how that describes our lives – so you can say – my life is an easy yoke – a light burden.

Priority Proverbs – what it means to be a proverb – something that is generally true but not absolutely true. There are times this is not going to be true – but in general, they do.

We all live our priorities, but we are not always aware of what they are.

All of us live by our prioriites – you already do! Let me explain. For me – one of my priorities is OSU football – I know that this Thursday at 8:00 pm – I will arrange my schedule to watch that game – now an emergency may take me away – but it has to be a big one! – so that is obviously a priority for me. That which you make sure you do is your priority.

We choose our priorities; they are not forced upon us.

That one does not feel true – but it generally is. In your job or school – your boss or teacher chooses your priorities. My wife lets her students know – this is not a democracy, it is a benevolent dictatorship! But when the job starts determining our life priorities – that is a problem

Sometimes our priorities choose us. Let’s say your toilet backs up – you now have a new priority for the day. You will FIND TIME to accomplish that priority!

If you don’t choose your priorities, someone else will choose them for you.

One way this is true: With parenting. You get to decide your family’s priorities. But sometimes we don’t understand – in parenting, we think we choose what we want our kids to be involved in – but we allow the pressure of the world to make those choices for us. We need to take back our responsibility with that.

The way we spend money – so much we allow the influence of the world to tell us how to do that. We will look at each of these separately.

We have multiple priorities.

There are certain priorities that everyone must do. There are not just one or two or three

Our priorities change based on our season of life.

That is okay. Things are not set in stone. We don’t have to feel like – I don’t do this like I used to - That just produces guilt. This is important – and this is good – so let’s just do it and not feel guilty because someone else says it is.

Your greatest priorities do not necessarily require the most time.

Let’s say – for your occupation – your work and commute take 10 hours a day. And you have two hours with your kids and spouse – that does not mean that work is your higher priority. Some people – with that kind of thinking – can feel really guilty about their time. You CAN have 10 hours a day work and commute – and still have your family be your priority.

Those are some proverbs – now what I would like to do is show how priorities are different for work and projects from our life priorities – and focusing on becoming the person God calls us to become

Here is the problem with priorities – we tend to order them – God, family, country – or God, Baseball, and Apple Pie – we stack them – and maybe it is God, Family, Church – for Christians.

We tend to stack priorities on top of each other. That may work for a project – but that does not work in life. Before you call me a heretic – let me explain this.

We say God/Jesus should be our first priority – I don’t think that is the way to look at it. Here is what I mean – if God is your first priority – you will do your God-thing – and then you will set that aside – because you are done with it. Whatever your God-thing is – reading a devotional, having a prayer time – here is a better way of looking at it. Instead of making God a priority – we need to center our lives around Christ.

A great example of this is during the eclipse – there were all kinds of shows talking about the sun – it starts at the core – there is all this energy that explodes out and moves out and affects everything the sun does. If we put Christ at the center of our lives – He is the core and everything else expands out of that – everything we touch is touched by our relationship with God. – Like dropping a rock in a pool – all the points go out from that.

Mary and Martha – Luke 10:

38 Jesus entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord's feet, listening to His word.

A person who said this – was choosing to be a follower of the Master. This was not just a devotional time – but she was choosing to center her life around Jesus. For the disciples of that time – a good disciple would be covered in the dust of a Master. The best disciples would follow so closely that the dust of the sandals of the master would kick up. Like on a dusty road, you can’t get too close to the car in front of you – or after the rain has stopped falling – you follow a truck too closely – and your windshield wipers have to constantly be going!

40 But Martha was distracted with all her preparations; and she came up to Him and said, "Lord, do You not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone? Then tell her to help me."

41 But the Lord answered and said to her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; 42 but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her."

Mary chose to center her life around Jesus. In doing that – He says – this cannot be taken away from you. She will receive the benefits of making this decision. The same is true of us – to live in the easy yoke – centering life on Christ – it is so much more than just having a devotional – she is learning to live moment by moment in the presence of God. You can have a devotion in the morning – and that is an excellent thing to do - but not experience God the rest of the day. All of us have done that. Conversely, you could MISS your devotional time, for some reason or another – but if Jesus is the center of your life, you can spend the rest of the day in the presence of God. That is what God wants us to choose - to live each moment in His presence. He is always there for us – always waiting for us – and that is what a disciple does – living the easy yoke – living our priorities. It starts not by saying – God is the first thing I’ll do in the morning – that is a valuable thing – but it starts by saying my life will be centered around God – at work, at home, with my family – on my own. To be a disciple means to live our lives the same way Jesus would live it if He were us. That is the easy yoke. We think that is not easy, but think of the other side: Jesus would have us forgive and make peace when there is conflict – not be bitter, not try to get ahead by stepping on others. That is hard to do, but in reality, it is harder to remain bitter than forgiving. Living in conflict and not addressing it – and ignoring it is much harder than reconciliation. The easy yoke may be the hard thing to do right now, but it takes the weight off down the road. Let’s pray.