PRIORITIZED

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also – Luke 12:34

The Ordered Life is a PRIORITIZED Life – a life that has its priorities in order. Prioritizing is about aligning your life and your priorities, doing what’s important. God desires that you balance the demands of life and prioritize the assignments, activities and relationships that matter most to you, based on what matters most to Him. This is for two purposes: first, so that you fulfil His Will and bring glory to Him, and second, for your good. God’s highest and best is accomplished when there is an alignment of your priorities with the way He has made you and designed life to work. But, when your priorities get out of tune, when the balance is missed, it produces painful outcomes and often, significant damage. Such a life is out of control.

It’s fanciful to talk of a “Purpose-driven Life,” but does God really want our lives to be “driven”? What the Bible says is “For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom.8:14). I choose to be more Spirit-led than purpose-driven. This is not to underrate the Primacy of Purpose; it is simply to subsume it under the higher dimension of the leading by the Holy Spirit – His gentle, loving leading. There are sincere Christians who are utterly focused on goals, militarily disciplined, and purpose-driven, but who end up as wretched workaholics with life-destroying schedules. You need to pause, look, and evaluate your priorities. Is your life in sync? Is it being lived the way God wants it to, for His glory and your good?

A writer suggested these six warning symptoms of misplaced priorities:

Busyness: a life characterized by hurrying and rushing all the time, being driven, eating on the run, piles of files and stuff in the office, at home, on the desk, floor, and in the garage; just too many balls to juggle. And loved ones are gently suggesting that you “Slow down” from this “activity trap.”

Anxiety, emotional stress, pressure, and uptightness: this may already be manifesting as chest pain, migraine headache, trouble sleeping, uneasy feeling, and restlessness. You’re multitasking about everything, all the time. There are no windows of real rest.

Nagging Guilt: feeling bad about yourself not being fulfilled. There are a lot of things that you know you’re supposed to do, which you did in the past and actually tell other people they should do, but you don’t do them anymore. You just fake them! Yet you hate this feeling of duplicity and hypocrisy, and keep telling yourself, “I’ll get back to that!” Relationships become superficial. Daily pressures push aside the need to stop, envision, plan, and think about the future.

Financial problems and debt: skipping tithes and offerings. The debt begins to pile up; the giving begins to deteriorate. It’s like there are holes in the finances. It’s coming in but leaking hugely.

Prayerlessness: leakage in the devotional life; like on a spiritual roller coaster of emotional ups and downs, highs and lows.

Escapism or some thrill-seeking behaviour: this may manifest in the forms of impulsive buying, expensive vacations, overeating, or getting lost in videos. 

Each of these symptoms starts like a tiny itch, but if not dealt with early, degenerates into destructive ‘cancer’! It gradually weaves into life and becomes a Big Bang. The big falls always start with little slips and trips. David’s downward slide began with a careless patio relaxation “at the time when kings went out to battle” (2Sam.11:1-2).

The main antidote against these symptoms is walking in the indwelling Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit. You connect with Him in the place of the Word, Prayer, and fellowship of believers. The overflow oils other relationships and flows into lives, work and ministry. Prioritizing and balancing your life really have to do with getting clear on who you are, what God wants you to do, getting a sense of holy urgency and realizing life is passing – time is short. It’s not enough to say “I did 60 percent of things on my list.” Is it the right list? Where is your treasure? There your heart is!