Christian Priorities

My Christian Priorities ... or Not

I'm not exactly sure when I realized that my Christian priorities weren't in order.

Have you ever felt like you've tried and tried and no matter what you do, things don't turn out right? Have you ever gone to God and said, "God, I can't do this anymore. I'm just worn out and I'm done trying?"

I remember thinking that somewhere, somehow, there HAD to be a better way. Life couldn't possibly be this chaotic, this unfocused, and so completely wrong.

For years I tried everything to meet my goals. But eventually I turned into what is known today as a work-a-holic. Nothing was as important to me as my career. Not God, not my family, not anything. I would work 50, 60, 70 hours a week and just keep telling myself and my family that I had to do this if we wanted to get ahead. I would just go around and around the same mountain. AND I would do the same wrong things on every trip.

Stop the World and Let Me Off.......

Do you know what happens when you go around a mountain enough times? You wear a rut in the path. And when you continue, the rut just gets deeper and deeper. I figure I was up to about my neck when I finally stopped. Yup, it took lots and lots of years doing it wrong to finally realize that continuing to do the same wrong things over and over simply wasn't working.

Trying to find a balance isn't easy when you're focused on the wrong things. And establishing your Christian priorities...well, they certainly don't just descend on you in the middle of the night.

Fortunately, God is pretty good at meeting you where you are, even if all He can see is you standing in a rut up to your neck. Slowly but surely God takes you by the hand and leads you out of the rut, one step at a time, one issue at a time, IF you ask for the help.

But just because you turn things over to God, doesn't mean He's going to show you the whole plan.

He didn't show me what He had in mind. He just led me step by step. If He would've laid out the whole thing for me, I would've looked like a deer caught in the headlights. It would've blinded me. Instead He showed me just enough to keep me relying on Him...trusting in His timing...believing Him, one step at a time. I was OK with it though, because then I only needed to have faith for that day. And at the time that "mustard seed" faith was all I had. One day at a time was all I COULD see.

Who Me? Climb UP the Mountain???

So as the journey up the mountain began, God started confronting me about all kinds of things. He started working with me in areas that weren't productive...like wrong attitudes and things like patience, kindness, humility...you know, REAL Christian priorities. Ugh, who knew those were all that important?

Little by little, God showed me that if I wasn't going to honor the most important things, then nothing would ever work right.

Today I'm in a different place on a different journey. Even though you can never have absolutely perfect Christian priorities, I'm alot better than I was! Whenever you get better in one area, God confronts you about another one. But, oh well, life is just a bunch of journeys with an occasional destination. As Joyce Meyer says, "we'd better just learn to enjoy the journeys..."

As you can see, this website is one of my new journeys. I wasn't so sure what to think when God led me in this direction, but here's how this whole thing got started.

And oh yeah, that mountain with the rut? Today I can't see much of it anymore. I just keep looking up toward the top of the mountain.