The Priority Struggle

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, October 31st. With so many good things Christians can be involved in, how do you decide what you should be doing? Here's some clarity on how you can win the priority struggle. What is the priority of your life? I mean the one thing that everything else revolves around. Maybe you hadn't thought about the fact that you have a priority or you do have some priorities in your life. For example, you have some priorities in your finances, some priorities in your home life, priorities in your business. But what about the priority of your life?

Have you thought about the fact that there is one thing, something out there probably around which everything else revolves? Or maybe you're just one of those persons who just sort of lets life come and go and you just sort of follow the flow and you take it easy. You're sort of passive about that. Well, nowhere in the Bible does it say that I'm to be passive about my life. Nor am I to be passive about what the priorities of my life are about. So that's what I want to talk about in this message, the priority struggle, because there is a struggle in making the priority of what it ought to be and then living by that priority. So I want you to turn, if you will, to Matthew chapter six. And in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus very clearly tells us what that priority should be.

And he also discusses the struggle in keeping that priority in its proper place. Matthew chapter six. And let's begin reading in verse thirty-one. And you'll recall this is the passage that is so familiar to us when he talks about all the things in life that we need and their attitude toward them. So he begins by saying in verse thirty-one, Do not be anxious then saying, What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink?

Or with what shall we clothe ourselves? For all these things the Gentiles eagerly seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things should be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. Amen to that last phrase. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Don't be fretting about tomorrow. Now, I want you to notice here what he says in this thirty-third verse. But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Here is the priority in the believer's life. He says to seek first His kingdom and His righteousness.

That's it. It is our personal relationship with Jesus Christ. That is the most important thing in our life. There is not anything in life anywhere close to having the importance in the mind of God as our own intimate, personal relationship with Christ. He says we're to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Now, the priority in our life is to so relate ourselves to Him, and so submit ourselves to Him, that the rule of Jesus Christ, that is His Lordship, submission to Him, yielded to Him, and in essence one single word, obedience to Him is the bottom line in the Christian life. That is, every decision must be sifted through His rule.

If He is ruling in my life and I have that vertical relationship with Him, and He is ruling and reigning in my heart, every decision has to get sifted through that. If it is of Him, it moves on. If it is not of Him, it must stop. If it is not of Him, it must be cast aside.

If it is not of Him, it must be rejected. Seek ye first. Make first in your life. The bottom line of everything else is what must I do to be obedient to God? What does obedience mean to me in this decision, in that decision, this decision, whether it is in business or in the family or health or pleasure or friends or prosperity, finances? The ultimate bottom line issue is what is the will of the Father? There is nothing else in life that takes precedence over that. Jesus said the only thing that is legitimate in His eyes is that my own personal intimate relationship of waking up in the morning, committing myself to walk obediently before Him during the day, and expressing this Christ-like life through us.

And let me give you a caution here. That is not something that you and I can do. It is something that can only be done as we rely upon the Spirit of the Living God who is living within us. That's why He gave us the Holy Spirit.

He knows that you and I cannot do that. And so He, listen, that's what grace is all about. The grace of God is His unmerited love and favor to us.

His graciousness and kindness and goodness taught us without regard to what we are, whether we deserve it or not, whether we are worth it or not in our eyes, whether we merit it or not, that's not even the issue. The issue is that God in His wonderful grace and His loving kindness and forgiveness is willing to work in our life in a beautiful, wonderful way to bring us into this intimate relationship with Him whereby by the Holy Spirit, we can choose obedience in difficult times. We can choose obedience in times of temptation.

We can choose obedience when everything is blowing against us, when the storms of life hit with all of their torrents and all of their power and all of their pressure and all of their force, that somehow we can stay steady on the course no matter what. Because the bottom line of our life is obedience to Him. Jesus isn't just something in our life. And when I hear people talk about I've made Jesus a part of my life, they've missed the whole point.

You don't make Jesus a part of your life. He becomes your life. When you're saved, He is life. Everything revolves around Him. And everything in our life revolves around Him because He is the central focus. He's the key. He's what life is all about. And without Him, you and I have no life. There's no purpose, no meaning, no real validity to life. And so life is just one passing moment apart from Jesus Christ. And so He said, seek ye first.

Make it your priority. Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve around this, that you and I are to develop and continue to develop this ongoing, intimate, wonderful, exciting, warm, contenting, satisfying, indescribable, wonderful, incomparable, fathomless relationship with a personal God who loves us enough to live on the inside of us and to unveil Himself and to show us Himself and to show us His truth and to walk intimately with us so that in every single moment of life, we sense His presence. That is the believer's privilege. That is the believer's blessing.

That is the believer's heritage to be able to walk in continuing awareness of the presence of God. No matter how busy you are doing what you're doing, there's always the awareness of His presence. When He is my priority, that will be true. But you see, in order for that to happen, I have to work at that.

There's something I do have to do. You cannot make Him the priority and keep Him that priority apart from the Word of God and spending time listening and talking to Him and listening. You see, that's when the intimacy grows.

That's when the intimacy is growing. And if I am not growing in an intimate relationship with Him, then I am not walking in His Spirit. He is not the priority of my life because, you see, it takes time to do that.

It takes time. He said, seek ye first the kingdom of God in this righteousness and all these things shall be added. So I want to ask you, what is the priority? What is more important to you than being obedient to God? Who is more important to you than being obedient to God? What is more important to you than expressing a Christ-like life?

Whatever it is, I can tell you it's out of place. And Christ, who desires to live. Listen, not just to be Lord, He is the Lord. But He desires to live out that lordship in our conversation, our conduct, and our character. What is the thing that your life revolves around? And you see, that brings me to the next thing I want to talk about here. We said, first of all, here's the priority. And secondly, let's talk about the pressure because there are pressures that want to drive us off course and pressures that want to push us away from what the priority is. And so what he's saying here is, even before he tells what the priority is, he says, now, here's what you struggle with. Here are the things you struggle with. And one of the things that's so subtle about it is because we have to be involved in the very things that trip us up. We have to be.

We don't have an exception. And I want to say, when he says, seek ye first the kingdom of God as righteousness, that does not mean to the exclusion of other things in life that are necessary. It is necessary that a man take care of his family, necessary that he watch his children, necessary that he have a job, necessary that he work and labor diligently, necessary that he become involved in his business or in his labor and doing his best.

All of those things are necessary. But what he's saying here is this. Here's the problem.

The problem is the excessive, excessive care, excessive time, excessive expenditure in these areas. He says, what happens is because of our fear, and that is the bottom line of the problem, I fear that I won't get my needs met. I fear that this won't happen. I fear this in business. I fear this in church. I fear this in ministry. I fear this here.

I fear that. He says, stop being anxious. Worrying and being anxious over these things and getting your priorities out of order. He says, first of all, verse twenty-five, he says, it is absolutely needless.

Look at this. Don't be anxious. I said, don't be anxious for your life, what you shall eat, what you shall drink, your body, what you shall put on it. Is not life more than food and body than clothing?

Aren't you more important than those things themselves? Look, if you will, in verse twenty-six. Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more worthy than they? Now think about this.

He said when he created this world and he created this environment and he created life and his whole economy of how things work, all of the things of the celestials in their orbits, the ocean with its tide, the moon and its effect and so forth, he said, the heavenly Father arranged things so that He feeds the birds. Why in the world would you and I be anxious when He's promised to take care of us? I'll tell you why. Because my priority gets out of order.

When my priority gets out of order, I begin to give excessive concern for things and before long that becomes the priority. At my house, I've never seen this bird, but every morning there is a bird outside of my bedroom window. I mean, he wakes me up every single morning, I mean, no exception, with this loud, radiant kind of chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp.

I mean, it's like he's just, he's saying, hey, wake up, man, it's a brand new morning, get up. Now think about this. That bird has no worry. Doesn't have a mind, of course, like you and I do. But you know what the heavenly Father says? That that little creature, He's not going to be anxious about anything.

Why? Because the heavenly Father has created such an atmosphere and environment, He's going to take care of that little bird. Now, I thought about this. Suppose I woke up one morning and that little bird said, chirp, chirp, chirp. Chirp, chirp, chirp.

I don't think I'd get out of bed. I think something bad is going to happen. But you think about birds, how beautiful their sound is. And sometimes it's surreal and sometimes not so surreal, but loud and sometimes just beautiful. And you can hear them whistling and singing back to each other. They're happy, they're joyous.

Why? The Father who created the birds is the Father who gave them the ability to chirp and to whistle and to make us joyful. He's the same little, it's the same little bird and He's the same Father who said, I'm going to take care of them. So I want to say to you, if you're not contented and you're not happy and things are just not right, you need to ask yourself the question, what is my priority? What am I thinking about most? What are my concerns in life?

Are my concerns those things that God says He's ready to take care of if I'll just make my priority what it ought to be? Now, here's the bad thing about Christians. What He's saying in this passage is when we do this, we act like heathens. That's the word, heathens.

Look at this. He says in verse thirty-two, for all these things, what? Food, clothing, shelter, excessive concern about these things in our society, transportation, education, and all the other. All these things the Gentiles, which is His word here, for heathens, unbelievers. And verse thirty-three, that if I make Him my priority, that He says, and all these things shall be. Listen, He didn't say, and one of these days you'll be able to work up enough that you'll be able to handle all.

You get all that. No, He says, all these things shall be added by the Father to you. He promises that every need that we have, and if I delight myself in Him, He'll give me the desires of my heart. Because you see, if He's my priority, only that which pleases Him do I want. What does not please Him, I don't want that. And so when He makes this awesome statement, delight yourself in the Lord and He'll give you the desires of your heart, you think, boy, He doesn't know what I want. Yes, He does.

Yes, He does. He also knows that your desires are indicative of the fact that you're not delighting yourself in Him. Because if you delight yourself in Him, you know what that does? That sifts my desires. So He can make these awesome statements because He intends to fulfill every single promise He made.

Now, think about this. He says if you and I will make developing this intimate relationship with Him, desiring to walk daily in obedience to Him and allow Him to express His Christlike life through us. He says if you'll make that number one, if you'll make that the priority, if all of your decisions in all of your life will revolve around that, He says, here's what I Almighty God, sovereign, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, loving, faithful, gracious, kind God.

Here's what you can rest in. I, whom absolutely and perfectly reliable and faithful, I will see to it that all of your concerns will be taken care of and I will meet every need of your life. That's His promise.

It all boils down to one or two words, trust or distrust. If I trust Him, I'll make Him my priority. If I don't, I'll choose another priority.

And I will be a loser in life if He and that intimate relationship with Him is not my priority. Now, listen real carefully, because I'm about to close, but I want you to think about something. There are two things that you can look at today to determine what your priority in life is right now.

Two things. Number one, your calendar. How are you spending your time? Where are you spending your time? With whom are you spending your time?

That'll tell you which priority is. Because you see, I mean a calendar, if your calendar would reveal everything that you do, I wonder if on that calendar, how much time is there personal devotions? Is that on Monday? Is it down there on Tuesday? What about Wednesday or Thursday? Friday? Oh, I know Saturday is a break day, but is it down Saturday?

What about Sunday? The second thing you can look at is your checkbook. Your checkbook will tell you where your priority is. And I'll tell you why Jesus said where your money is, that's where your heart is. And notice He didn't say, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and forget all that other stuff.

He didn't say that. He said keep it in its proper perspective. But my calendar and my checkbook reveal where my priorities are. And they reveal where yours are. You may not even keep a calendar, but I mean the calendar of your life, the calendar of your daily life, your weekly life, and I want to ask you, what would yours show and what does it show? If you could put last week's activities continually, everything you did, I want to ask you with all of my heart because I love you, how much time did you spend with the one who died for you? Who lives on the inside of you? Who's made you this awesome promise that if He's first, you get everything?

How much time did you spend with Him? How much of His Word did you get into your heart, into your mind and your spirit so that you could think the way He thinks and live out the life that He's called us to live? And does your checkbook say that God is first? Because the first thing I write is my tithe. Does it say that your priority in life is obeying Him, walking in obedience to Him? Because you see, if it is, I'm going to be concerned about other people and I want to be sure that other people hear the gospel and God changes their life. I challenge you to look at your calendar, look at your schedule and look at your checkbook and ask yourself honestly, a sincerely, soberly, gut-level question. According to these two, what is my priority in life? If it's Jesus, it'll be evident.

If it's not, it'll be glaring. Thank you for listening to The Priority Struggle. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by InTouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.