Matthew 6:33 (NKJV) 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

PRIORITIES OF LIFE Matthew 6:33

Priorities of Life  From time to time we hear someone speak about the priorities of life  Our priorities are simply the order of importance that we place the things of our lives in  Everyone has priorities, whether they are verbally stated or not

Priorities of Life  Priorities are often identified by where we place our resources  How we spend our time, energy, money, etc. shows our priorities  Our priorities can change throughout our lives  Ex. Marriage, birth of a child, job, etc.

Priorities of Life  We can look at characters in the Bible to see priorities  Christ showed His priorities in Luke 2 when He was only 12 years old (v. 49)  That continued throughout His life, His ministry, and even in His death He showed where His priorities lay

Priorities of Life  Paul showed his priorities throughout the book of Acts, as he went on missionary journeys  He showed his priorities by what he suffered in the name of Christ (II Cor. 11:23-28)  There was no question as to what was important to him

Priorities of Life  We too have some things that should be priorities to us  Solomon put it this way in Ecclesiastes 12:13…  “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all”

Priorities of Life  We too should be about God’s business  It should be the main essence of our lives here on this earth  Can we honestly say that God is our main priority?  How can we show in our lives that He is #1?

Priorities of Life  1. Prioritize our time  This is one area where we all can see some improvement  How many times have we said, “There are just not enough hours in the day”  There are enough hours in the day, but we must make better use of our time

Priorities of Life  1. Prioritize our time  How many of us get up an extra 15 or 30 minutes earlier in the morning, only to find that we still leave for work, school, or worship services at the same time?  The problem is that when we have extra time, we tend to waste most of that extra time because we know we have a buffer there

Priorities of Life  1. Prioritize our time  If a project at work is due that afternoon, we work non-stop to get it done  If it’s due in 2 weeks, we may waste time until the day before or the day of until we work on it  We do that at times with God’s will

Priorities of Life  1. Prioritize our time  How many times have we reached the end of the day and thought “I meant to read my Bible today but I just didn’t have time”?  Truth is we have the time, we just don’t always prioritize the way we should  What if we read our Bibles first?

Priorities of Life  1. Prioritize our time  That’s what Jesus wanted when He spoke what we read in Matthew 6:33  When we put God first regarding our time, we will see ourselves growing in our faith  Notice how many times Jesus rose early in the morning to get some prayer time in (Mk. 1:35-37)

Priorities of Life  1. Prioritize our time  Jesus time was in great demand, as is ours  Let’s not give God our leftovers, but rather our firsts  Jesus also taught us that at times, we must make the time to be with God (Matt. 14:23)  Whatever it takes, we need that time w/God

Priorities of Life  2. Prioritize our money  The money we have is a blessing from God (Js. 1:17)  We need to work hard to ensure that we are:  1. Giving back to God  2. Not living above our means

Priorities of Life  2. Prioritize our money  If we do not think that giving is important to Christ, then we should read Mark 12:41-44  It doesn’t matter so much the dollar amount we give  What does matter is that we do give and that we give with a gracious heart and thankful spirit

Priorities of Life  2. Prioritize our money  Much like our time, we need to be careful not to give God our leftovers  Our money is much like our time  If we have a good amount, we tend to be wasteful of some  We may end up wasting what we would have given to God

Priorities of Life  2. Prioritize our money  Remember what Jesus said about our giving in Luke 6:38?  When we give, God blesses us, more that we deserve or can even imagine  If we give God our firsts, we will surely be blessed in so doing

Priorities of Life  3. Prioritize our goals  Some like setting goals, others are anti-goal  It’s probably safe to assume that we all have goals, some may not be spoken or written down  For example, we all have a goal of getting to heaven when this life ends

Priorities of Life  3. Prioritize our goals  However, we need to be sure that we are prioritizing our spiritual goals over our non- spiritual goals  Jesus told of a certain rich man who had some goals in Luke 12:16-21  He had goals, and there was nothing wrong with them in and of themselves

Priorities of Life  3. Prioritize our goals  However, this man had no goals that concerned God  That was his problem  We need to prioritize our goals to be sure that God is a part of our plans  James 4:13-15