Pressed For Time

When you're pressed for time, it's hard to think of those around you. Sometimes in these situations we can be irritated by those around us to want to interrupt us from what we're trying to do.

We must try not to be irritated by others because they want some of our time. After all how do you know you'll not be presented with a wonderful opportunity to spend God's message of love!

Philippians 1:12 (NLT)
Everything that has happened to me here has helped me spread the Good News".
We can't afford to shut ourselves off completely from others around us, as God wants us to spread His word throughout the world but how can we do that if we get irritated by others and fail to take advantage of situations as they present themselves.

Sometimes I think we just need God to remind us of our priorities. People are our priority (see me blog post Putting People and Christ First. This is simply a lesson we have to learn over and over again...People come first!

Hectic Lives

Do you find yourself running about here there and everywhere on a daily basis? Do you always have a hundred and one tasks to do and not enough time to do them? Do you feel you get little opportunity to spend quality time with your family and friends?

Even in the middle of our hectic lives, we must make sure that we let God help us to make the best use of our time. Our first task is to make sure we make time for God regularly. Once we do that God will then begin to manage us as we manage everything else. We mustn't be too hectic to be helped or too scheduled to stop and talk awhile with our heavenly Father about the many priorities we face in our life.

Make a habit of going into your "place of solitude" so you spend quality time in prayer, away from the muddle that can be our daily life. Take time out for fifteen blissful minutes alone with the Lord to get your priorities right. You'll be a whole lot better for it!

Putting People and Christ First

People matter more than schedules
People matter more than programs.
Making people a priority means putting people first...That is the way Jesus lived his life, so that is why God wants us to live that way too.

Micah 6:8 (NLT)
The Lord has already told you what is good, and this is what he requires you to do: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.

All these requirements will affect everyone around us. Doing what is right means living rightly in everything we do, wherever we are and whoever we are with. In responding rightly to wrong behaviour and judging rightly when conflicts arise.

Of course Christ did all these things perfectly, he will give us his nature so we have the power to do what we would be powerless to do in our own strength.

Philippians 2:3-4 (NLT)
Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.

In other words, putting people first will make you more like Jesus who always made sure his relationships, first with God and then with people, were his top priorities.

A Matter of Priority

Setting priorities is a question of making up your mind. When our top priority is to serve God first and foremost, then our decisions flow from that commitment.

What will that look like? It will look like holiness. In the bible Daniel jeopardized his career by refusing to eat food offered to him by the king because he had "made up his mind not to defile himself by eating food and wine given to them by the king" (Daniel 1:8). Daniel made one of his top priorities not to defile himself. Can you say the same?

If we claim that God has our heart and that takes priority over all other allegiances on earth, can we say that we've made up our mind not to defile ourself?

Daniel stuck to his priorities, and God stuck to Daniel, making him an indispensable servant to the king and a great role model for each of us.