Know Your Purpose and Priorities

 

The classified section of the Quay County Sun newspaper in June of 1978 contained this ad: “Farmer with 160 irrigated acres wants marriage-minded woman with tractor. When replying, please show picture of tractor.”

What is Your Purpose in Life? Have you set priorities to get there?

What are God’s priorities for us sin 2019?

Biblical Priority # One

Put God first. Make things of Eternal Significance number one.

In Luke 10:42 and following we find Jesus’ perspective on priorities.

Now as they were traveling along, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home.

She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His word.

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.”

But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things;

but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

 

Life offers multiple opportunities. What are we choosing? Life demands choices: Mary chose the better part. Are we pleasing God or people? Paul said, “If I’m still trying to please people, I’m not pleasing God. “Sometimes, we can’t do both.

Some things are eternally significant: time with Jesus in the Bible. Time with God in prayer. Getting filled with the Holy Spirit. Evangelism. Worship.

I’m so glad God caught us up in Chicken Evangelism. (Share Christ before you chicken out.) Nearly 100% of Jesus’ outreach was with one-off, random contacts with strangers. To be like Jesus, we will share the free gift of salvation with people in the first minutes we meet. What a joy to begin the discipleship process with strangers!

Biblical Priority # Two

Make things of earthly significance number two.

What are some things of temporal significance? This does not mean they are not important. It only means they are less significant and we need to grant them less time. Some of these are family, leisure, movies, TV, recreation, health, eating, texting, the internet, etc.

One survey in the 1990’s showed the following about USA priorities:

Sleep………………23 years……….32.9%

Work……………..16 years………..22.8%

TV…………………..8 years………..11.4%

Eating……………….6 years………..8.6%

Travel……………….6 years………..8.6%

Leisure…………..4.5 years………..6.5%

Illness……………….4 years………..5.7%

Dressing……………2 years………..2.8%

Things of God….0.5 years………..0.7%

Total…………….70 years…………100%

Sleep and work are givens. Hard to change much there. Notice the third most important category. 8 years out of a lifetime spent with TV. If the survey were taken today, how much time would be spent on cell phones? Or the internet?

Contrast this with the last category: 0.7% of our time spent with the things of God.

Whether we admit it or not, the amount of time we spend with something shows how important it is to us. It tells us our priorities.

As we turn the page on the calendar to 2019, let’s stop and think. What is your lifetime purpose? What has God placed you on earth for? It would be terrible to go through life and not fulfill God’s purpose.

What is your God-given purpose? And what priorities have you set to get there? Think about it.

Rarely do we make life changes in a flash. Take some time. Kari and I recently went one night to a motel to re-orient ourselves. Very helpful. Take some time now. Give some thought. Talk it over with God.

What is your God-given purpose? And what priorities have you set to get there? Mary chose the good part.

Think about it.