The Context of Priorities

I wrote this for the Regional Youth Council newsletter but thought I would post it here as well. What does your list of priorities look like? I want you to close your eyes for a minute and think about “your list.” If I was a betting man, I would say you put God as number one on your list, which most people I have talked to agree that the number one spot is reserved for the man upstairs. After God on the list is usually family, then friends, then maybe school. Maybe you have other priorities on your list like; a need to be more popular, or a need to get in shape, or even a need to make more money. Don’t take this the wrong way but all these priorities are good. They are healthy as long as they are put in the right order, and within the context of our first priority. If some of your priorities are not cohesive with your first one, then you probably need to rethink those and make sure that God would approve the items on your list. If you feel the need to be more popular so you can stand out and grab the attention of others to bring them to Christ, then that would support our first Priority. If needing to get in shape or stay in shape is on your list because you want to be fit to serve the kingdom of God, I’m sure he would approve. If you desire to be wealthy so that you can support your church and your community charities, then God will sign off on your list. So when you come to the point of adding to or taking away from you catalog of priorities, just remember to consider the Almighty. As for me, being here in Costa Rica this year has made me set my catalog in order. It has also changed my perception of the world. But you need not leave the country, or even your home, to view the world in this day and age. With the help of the internet we literally have the world at our fingertips. Now the question is when we get access to that world what are the things we look at? Of course YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Romans blog…all of which are great things!!! We also need to be wary of the internet because with the good, come the bad. The internet is a powerful tool, use it wisely. I mean we all know Facebook can be addictive, right? So…Backing up…the number one priority is for whom? Or what? We know God as the almighty being who sent his son into this world, not to condemn it, but to save it. Now we also know that where ever two or more are gathered, He is there also. So God is the Church. An image comes to my mind of a collage of tens of thousands of photos (people’s faces) and the way these photos are put together make a bigger picture. That picture has some photos that are brighter or darker, colorful or in black and white, tattered and torn, new and old, candid or posed, all of which have their place in the church. This is how I picture the body of Christ. I don’t personally know ten thousand people and I’m sure you don’t either, unless you are the creator of Facebook. So I believe that as our first priority reaching out to everyone in need, is our life’s biggest goal. So I wrote all of this to say; I believe that serving God with any kind of Mission, large or small, foreign or domestic, musically or physically, to young or old is and should be our first and only Priority.