Have you ever made a list of your priorities? I sure have, especially this time of year. I make lists of what needs done in what order. I start with my top priority, then I list the next most important thing, and then the next and the next and the next. Buying the turkey is more important this week than making sure my attic door is fixed. Right?
Did you know you can’t have more than one priority? At its first use in the 14th century, the word priority was singular. It meant the prime thing or the most important thing. In fact, the phrase top priority is redundant. You can’t have a top most important thing. You can only have one. It wasn’t used as a plural until the 1940’s, and now we rarely use it singularly.
Although we multitaskers try, don’t we?
As Christians, we say God is our priority, but what does that really look like? Does that mean He’s first in our thoughts? First in our day?
So if we think of something else when we first get up, or some days before our eyes are even opened, does that mean He wasn’t our priority that day?
Does it look like sitting down with our Bibles in our secret place to read and pray for the first hour of the day? But if we oversleep our alarm, does that mean God wasn’t the most important thing to us that morning? Or is “first thing” the only time we spend with Him?
I think God being our priority means that He’s the center. It means every decision we make about our time and talent and words and resources revolves around Him. God wants our heart in every area of our lives, and if we make any decision based on any other thing, that thing becomes the center. It becomes our priority.
Imagine your life like the wheel of a bike. The center piece is called a hub and the outer piece that holds the tire on is the rim. What connects the rim to the hub are called spokes.
You are the rim and Jesus is the hub and the rubber tire is made up of all the things you do and the decisions you make. Check out this visual:
If Jesus is the center, there shouldn’t be a single spoke that contains something that can’t touch His holiness. Everything we do with our time, our talent, our treasure and our tongue should be able to touch His holiness. If it doesn’t, it has no place on any one of those spokes.
And Jesus needs to stay in the center. It’s so easy to move something from any one of those spokes to the hub. How do you know if something has shifted places?
Is it consuming your thoughts? Is it consuming your time? Does not having it depress or discourage you? Are you basing your decisions around it instead of praying about what God wants?
Does it pull your heart, your attention, your focus away from God?
Did you know that even a God-given dream or calling can pull your heart away from God if it moves from a spoke to the hub? When that becomes the priority, it kicks Jesus off the throne and becomes an idol.
And if you think God won’t test you on it from time to time, you’re wrong. Just go read Genesis 22 and check out how He tested Abraham after giving him the son his heart longed to have for so long.
On occasion, God may press your button to see if you are staying so close because you want something from Him (or even need something from Him) or if you are walking with Him just because He’s Him. And it’s easy for the heart to wander and us not even realize it.
Paul always ended his letters to the churches with an uplifting encouragement. It was generally something along the lines of, “May God’s grace abound to you.” But John ended his first epistle in a much different way.
Little children, keep yourselves from idols (false gods)—[from anything and everything that would occupy the place in your heart due to God, from any sort of substitute for Him that would take first place in your life]. Amen (so let it be).
Dear children, keep away from anything that might take God’s place in your hearts.
I John 5:21 (ampc, nlt)
That is the very last sentence in John’s first letter to the church. Keep yourself from idols. Keep away from anything that shifts God out of the hub.
You and I have to do the keeping. And we can’t have more than one priority. It can’t be God and spouse and kids and calling. We can only have one Most Important Thing. But if we keep God is in His proper place in the hub, everything else will stay in place.
So let’s do this heart check today. Pray this with me. “Father, reveal anything to me in my life that has displaced You from the hub and give me the grace to move it back where it belongs. I don’t want anything to take Your place in my heart. I am not staying close because I want something from You. I am not only serving You because I need what You have. I want You. Always You. Only You. I’m grateful for all You’ve blessed me with, but there is nothing in this earth that could satisfy my heart more than You. Amen.”