Wednesday’s Word

Priorities: Opportunities or Necessities

Thanks so much for joining us for Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power and Wednesday’s Word with Trench Classes United. I truly love our Coffee Hours, a time to share these downloads I get in real time; in other words, I’m learning as I go and sharing as I learn. J Come on in for the latest download that I pray you will be able to upload and use in your own life.

When this year started, I determined in my heart to live like I’m living…in other words, play hard, not just work hard, and not live like I’m dying.  Balancing that determination with my husband/home, my court-reporting job and the ministry He has entrusted me with has been another story.

I felt like Cyndi Lauper singing “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”!

What’s crazy is as long as I am doing things with Him, not just for Him, I can do all things! But when my priorities are out of order, well, I can only imagine how I must look to our Heavenly Father as He looks down at me chasing my tail, really, which is sort of symbolic to chasing acceptance in a group, in my job, church, or focusing on what others think of me, or pursuing fun that doesn’t reflect my faith. How does one have it all?

Well I guess it depends on whose approval we are striving for, whose opinion matters the most to us. 

Did you know that before God gave Moses the 10 Commandments that there were 613 others the Jews had to try and live by in order to be deemed righteous?  I don’t know about you, but I think if I had to memorize, let alone follow, 613 commandments in order to be considered a follower of God, well, I’d probably fail before I started!

What does all this have to do with priorities? I’m so glad you asked. You see, God made it real simple for us to keep our priorities in order through His Son Jesus; He’s not really as complicated as we make Him out to be.J How did He make it simple?

Well, before Jesus paid the ultimate price for us and abolished the need to follow 613 plus 10 commandments, He spoke to all of us and narrowed that 623 commandment gap down to TWO!  And He completely avoided a trap that the religious leaders were setting for Him in the process.  In Mark 12:30-32, Jesus was asked which is the first – meaning the most important – commandment and Jesus replied “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” And then He went on to add the second commandment that He considered “like the first”: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Now I don’t know about you, but that first commandment looks a bit daunting, overwhelming, but the closer we get to our God, the more we’ll want to be with Him, so it actually becomes easier to love Him with all of our being, all of our actions, all of our mind. 

Very simply put: Do our priorities cause us to neglect God and neglect others? Is it a priority because it’s an opportunity to love God and others, or is it more self-serving? When I dare to ask myself these questions, and honestly answer it, oftentimes I need to re-evaluate and negotiate back to my First Love.

Coffee Hour Friend, I have learned over and over again that when we are pursuing our First Love, there will not be a last love. When His opinion is the first and last that matters, nothing else will really matter. It is then that our lives will come alive and we will no longer live like we’re dying from all the striving.

So when the world tosses us choices of all types, may we consciously choose to stand firm, get off the see-saw and out of the tug of war that has us bouncing up and down, side to side and keep our feet planted in Him who has already accepted us and approved us. His relentless and lavish love will have us living life alive!

Love,

Evinda