Make God Your Number One Priority When asked which commandment was the greatest, Jesus said we’re to love God with all our heart, our soul, and our strength (Mark 12:29-31, quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-5). We’re to love him more than anything else, to make him our number one priority. And when we understand God as referring […]
The Things Religious Leaders Focus on May Not Matter to God at All Modern church priorities look at attendance, offerings, and facility size. Perhaps this is because the world measures success by the number of people, amount of money, and size of buildings. We’re more like the world than we care to admit. More people […]
Most Christians Don’t Let Scripture Get in the Way of What They Believe I recently shared with some friends that “Most Christians won’t let the Bible get in the way of what they believe.” It’s a shocking statement—one that no doubt offends some—but the attitudes of many people about what the Bible says prove that […]
We Must Put God First Before Worrying about Ourselves In the short book of Haggai, the prophet has a message for the people and an application for us today. God, through Haggai, chastises his people. They live in nice homes, while God’s home—the temple—sits in shambles. It isn’t that God wants us to build great […]
Discover More About Haggai In the short book of Haggai, the central theme is that God’s house (the temple) needs to be rebuilt. It lay in ruins. But the people have not done so because they are focused on their own houses and comfort. As far as God is concerned, their priorities are wrong. They’re […]
The Timing of When People Arrive at Church Reflects Their Priorities When my wife and I went on our grand adventure of visiting fifty-two churches in a year, we decided we’d try to arrive at church ten minutes early. In doing so we would avoid breezing in at the last-minute, and we would have time […]
We Need to Order Our Priorities With Intention and Do What Matters Most Whether we realize it or not, we form priorities to order our lives. For most of my adult existence my number one priority has been God. Though I held this out as my ideal, sometimes, perhaps too often, my actions didn’t live […]
I often hear from aspiring writers who say, “I wish I had time to write.” Other people tell me, “I’m too busy to read my Bible.” Still others complain, “I’ve got too much going on to make it to church this week.” They give the same argument when asked to volunteer for a noble cause. […]
We spend time with people we like. The more we like them, the more time we spend together. If we claim people as friends but don’t often see them, then they must not be too important. The same is true with God. If God is important to us, we’ll spend time with him: not out […]
It’s a good idea to be aware of the priorities in our lives. We should periodically review what’s important to us and make sure our actions align with our intentions. For example, if I consider watching sports to be a waste of time but devote hours to its pursuit, then my actions don’t align with […]