When you received Christ as your Lord and Savior, you received the power and presence of his Holy Spirit in your life. Every Christian is called to be a minister and is spiritually gifted to serve their calling. Your ministry is a high priority to God, and, like Paul, we should consider completing our ministry as our priority—more precious than anything else in our lives.

It is common in our culture to think that only those called into full-time ministry, like Paul, should have that priority. But God has gifted and equipped all of his children with his Holy Spirit. Each of us has been called to “testify to the gospel of the grace of God.” Scripture describes those who serve full time but assigns discipleship to everyone.

Understanding your spiritual gifting will help you know how the Lord is most likely calling you to serve him. When are you most likely to share your faith? What is that thing you do that is not your doing but the work of Jesus through you? When have your “works” caused people to want to know your Lord?

Every Christian has been uniquely gifted to fulfill God’s calling in their life. We should make it a high priority to understand how we are gifted so that we can be faithful to serve him and “finish the course and the ministry” we have received from the Lord.

Your ministry is God’s high priority. God’s priorities are wisdom. Are you wisely focused on fulfilling God’s calling in your life? Through his Spirit, Jesus has gifted you to serve him. Our ministry is an eternal priority until we have finished the course and crossed the finish line into heaven.

Throughout Scripture God assures us that he has a plan for each of our lives. His plan is our blessed life now and the path for eternal blessing in heaven. Our priority is clear. We want to know God so that we can walk with him on the path he has set for our lives. Yet Scripture also makes clear that none of us walk through our lives perfectly in his will.

Thankfully, Scripture also teaches us of God’s love, grace, and redemption. God stands ready to guide us back to his plan if we will repent and return to his leadership in our lives.

If we fully understood the perfection of God’s plan, we would never question the directions he provides. The Lord will “fulfill his purpose” in our lives. His purpose is motivated and controlled by his steadfast love for us, which “endures forever.” God has a perfect plan designed for this life that will result in the blessings and rewards of our lives eternal.

We are not to live this life simply waiting for our eternal rewards. We are to live this life joyfully knowing we are given daily opportunities to receive those rewards. “The work of our hands” is simply our obedience to his divine guidance. Those are the works that will be blessed eternally.

God’s plan is to be our high priority because God’s plan will fulfill his purpose for our lives. We need to live confidently knowing that God’s priorities are wisdom. When we want his plan for our lives, we will want his direction and seek to follow the Holy Spirit’s leadership each day.

God’s priorities are wisdom, motivated by his steadfast love that endures forever. What has God planned for your life tomorrow? Will you make the answer to that question your high priority for prayer?

Scripture tells us that there is a reward for living with God’s priorities. So often in the Bible, the word reward is associated with our eternal lives, but Proverbs 22:4 tells us there is an earthly reward as well.

God is quick to reward two behaviors in our lives. God blesses those who choose to be humble and those who live in reverent awe of the Lord. According to the proverb, the reward for choosing a godly lifestyle is “riches and honor and life.”

God’s standards seem to stand in stark contrast to the messages in our culture. Could it be that is why the world teaches us to strive for success, elevate our self-images, and think of ourselves first? The world teaches us to earn our own blessings, and God tells us what he is quick to reward. We need only remember that Satan is the prince of this world to know which message we should follow.

God wants us to humble ourselves so that we can follow him as our King. Even Jesus submitted himself to God’s plans while on earth. God’s Son is our finest example of what it means to honor the Father and live humbly under his leadership. The difference between living with the world’s message and living with God’s is the source of our reward.

When we seek to build our own reputations, earn our own acclaim, and elevate ourselves, then we can never stop striving to keep the life we built from falling. It is the lesson Jesus was teaching when he spoke about building our lives on the solid rock rather than on the sand. When we live with God’s standards of humility and reverent awe, our rewards are his gifts of “riches and honor and life.”

A life marked by humility and fear of the Lord should be our high priority. That is the life lived peacefully in harmony with God and with others. It is a life God is able to reward with his blessings. God’s priorities are wisdom. What do you need to do to fully step into the blessed life God can reward?

One of the most difficult lessons a Christian must learn is that even our families can become an idol in our lives if we are not careful. Every Christian should love and serve their family, but our families are not to be our highest priority. That phrase just seems wrong but look at our first-century examples.

Jesus told his disciples to stop what they were doing and follow him. Jesus’ family tried to stop him from preaching and he ignored their concerns. Every disciple except John died in service to Christ, with many leaving their families without their help as a result.

Jesus’ words in Matthew 10 sound harsh, irresponsible, and even heartless. Yet, Christ said that whoever loves their family more than me is not worthy. Christ wasn’t teaching that family wasn’t an important priority; he was teaching us not to make our family our highest priority. 

God created the concept of family. He divided the Holy Land according to families. We are commanded to “honor” our parents and care for our children. Biblically, we are commanded to make our families a high priority, but Jesus taught us not to make them our highest priority. 

If we put family ahead of God, we are not teaching our family to know God as he is to be known. When we place family priorities ahead of God’s eternal priorities, we will teach others to think of themselves more highly than they should. If our family is an idol, we will serve our family at a higher level than we serve God.

God’s priorities are wisdom. When family becomes a higher priority than God, we have created an idol in our lives. If we trust idols, we step away from trusting God. Has your family become an idol in your life? For their sakes, repent of that choice and choose to be “worthy” of Christ. The wisest choice we can make for the sake of our families is to cause them to know and love Christ as their highest priority. We want those we love to be worthy of his saving grace.

Proverbs 16:19 reveals the heart of God for his children. God cares about whom we spend our time with and especially about the way our “company” reflects on our character and witness.

King Solomon had more wealth than almost any other human being has ever accumulated in a lifetime. Yet, he wisely wrote, “It is better to be of a lowly spirit with the poor than to divide the spoil with the proud.” In other words, it is better to be oppressed than to become a person who oppresses another. It is better to have nothing than to have the spoils obtained by wrong behaviors. It is better to be proud of ourselves than to be proud of our possessions.

We can be proud of our priorities if they reflect God’s wisdom and character at work in our lives.

This area of our faith stands most counterintuitive to the teaching of our culture. This is an area of our faith that, for most of us, will require a great deal of effort. We probably won’t think or live the wisdom of this proverb apart from the power of God. It isn’t natural to choose oppression instead of pride.

Solomon wasn’t saying that we shouldn’t be proud of ourselves. He was saying that we should be proud of ourselves for the same reasons we make God proud of who we are. Later, Solomon would say that, in the end, all that matters is that we “fear God and keep his commandments” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

God’s priorities are wisdom. We can be proud of our priorities when they reflect the priorities of God.

Many passages in Scripture talk about our good works and the benefit they have in our lives. Our good works are often the first witness we have with other people. I appreciate the phrase that says, “Don’t tell me I have a friend in Jesus until you show me I have a friend in you.” Good works matter, but Jesus said they might also be a wrong priority. When are good works not good?

In this passage, Jesus was speaking to the scribes and Pharisees, the most dedicated people of his day to accomplishing “good works.” Pharisees saw themselves as living examples of obedience to God. Jesus talked about the careful measures they took to tithe, even to tithe their spices to God. Then Jesus told them why their careful tithe wasn’t as important to God as they believed.

Jesus called these men “hypocrites.” In our culture, that sounds like slander, but Jesus wasn’t slandering them; he was describing them. In the first century, the word hypocrite literally referred to “an actor.” Jesus called them actors on a stage, people pretending to be someone they weren't.

Money and spices were a tithe of what they owned but didn’t indicate a dedicated heart to God. Jesus told them they were giving what was easy while neglecting what was important. Jesus said the weightier matters, the priorities that mattered the most, were justice, mercy, and faithfulness. We are to tithe, to do good works, but we ought not to think that those things replace our most important calling to be holy.

Good works are a wrong priority when we place those works ahead of our sanctification, the work of God in and through our lives. Sanctification is the work we do that makes us holy, more like Christ. God’s priorities are wisdom. God has called us to become the kinds of Christians whose priorities reflect that the character of Christ is at work in our lives.

Cleaning out and bagging up clothes you haven’t worn in a while always feels good. It is especially fun to bag up the clothes that make us consider, “What was I thinking when I bought that?!”

There is something about restoring order and simplifying our lives that is good for our souls. Maybe the Lord is trying to tell us something during those times. Getting something new, trendy, interesting, or beautiful is fun, but it’s even better when we realize we have just bought or received something of great value.

Jesus talked about “treasures on earth” at a time when most of his audience had very little in the way of possessions. Almost everything the first-century audience owned was a necessity of some kind. Yet, Jesus still referred to those things as “treasures on earth.” Our culture doesn’t value our necessities very often, unless we find ourselves missing one. We define our treasures as those extra things we enjoy having.

In many ways, Jesus’ words to his first-century audience are even more profound to our culture today. If we were forced to limit our possessions to only what would fit in our car, what would we choose?

I’m reminded of a friend who faced a similar predicament. A wildfire was racing toward her home. She knew she was about to lose everything, so she grabbed her computer, her wedding band, her dog, a family picture, and her purse. She shut the door and left. She is just fine today and would tell you that, in many ways, that moment was profound. She will always remember that there is very little we possess that truly matters in the deepest sense.

Our least valuable possessions are those things that we will not need forever. The “stuff” of this world is fun, and we should enjoy God’s blessings. But only the souls around us are eternal. God’s priorities are wisdom. God’s priorities are also eternal. Enjoy your treasures on earth, but wisely store up the treasure that you will own eternally.

The priorities of our culture are often at odds with the priorities of God. The world teaches us that the road to success is clawing our way to the top. Jesus taught his disciples to claw their way to the bottom. Success isn’t gained by stepping over or on others. Instead, it is gained by becoming the “servant of all.”

Wise priorities are the result of learning to think biblically. God sent his Son to the world so that the world might be saved, but Jesus is also our example and teacher for how to live in this world. God’s people wanted a king, someone to look up to on earth. Eventually, the kings would become one of the reasons the promised land was divided and finally defeated by conquering nations. 

God’s people didn’t need a king because they already had the King of kings and Lord of lords. It’s never been easy for God’s children to recognize the greatness of God in a servant. Jesus came to model that great truth to the world, and many didn’t recognize their Messiah. They still wanted an earthly king rather than the greatness found in the Servant King of all.

Jesus said, “If anyone would be first, he must be last of all.” How can we learn to trust those words and then serve our Lord by clawing our way to the bottom? 

If we consider Jesus’ words to his disciples as our high priority, how would that change the way we serve him and others? 

How do his words change the way you value or admire others?

If we learn to think biblically, our priorities will change. When we learn to value what God values, we will change. Jesus taught us to claw our way to the bottom because, in doing that, we will find him. God’s priorities are wisdom. God wanted his children to be servants so he sent his Son as our example. Let’s work hard to claw our way to the bottom and serve God and others as Jesus did. He was the Servant King of all.

God wanted his children to belong to a family on earth even before they became a family in heaven. We were created by God to need and enjoy relationships with him and with other people. A lot of Scripture teaches us how to live on earth as we will one day live in heaven.

Paul taught each Christian in the Philippian church to “look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” Imagine belonging to a church that genuinely appreciated and enjoyed the diversity of interests within its congregation. God wanted us to enjoy many things, not just the few things we find interesting ourselves. 

We are more likely to join a church that has the music we like. We are more likely to join a class on Sunday that has people who talk, think, and act like we do. We probably won’t even visit churches we know are not like us. 

Christians in the first century didn’t have those options. There was probably just one gathering of Christians in the city. Some of the members had grown up in the synagogue learning Jewish rules, customs, and behaviors.

Other members had grown up in the Greco-Roman culture and had an entirely different way of life. It was difficult for the early Christians to find common ground. And Paul told them to care about the interests of others willingly and joyfully.

Many in the early church obeyed Paul’s words, and their witness to the culture was profound. What would happen if our churches did the same thing today? Would the church become known for the way diverse people could find common ground and enjoy one another’s interests? 

Americans live in an increasingly diverse and divided country. What should we do with Paul’s advice the next time we enter any church? How can we care about the interests of others and encourage them to do the same? 

God’s priorities are wisdom. He created us to be a diverse family of faith that embraces and enjoys our variety of interests. Our witness will be strengthened if we embrace and live the wise priority that Paul taught the first-century church in Philippi. Wisdom is knowing that our interests matter to God, and so do the interests of others.

God loves to bless his children with prosperity. Some of our prosperity is defined by the things we own or possess. God gives us possessions, and those things can give us peace of mind, contentment, and a sense of safety for the future—until they don’t.

God taught Adam and Eve how to take care of all that he had given them. He wanted them to enjoy the beauty and tranquility of the Garden and their relationship with him. But their attention was drawn away from God and toward the serpent. They knew what God had told them, but they wanted to believe what Satan was saying even more. So, they ate the fruit and sin entered our world.

They knew what God had given to them, but they didn’t pay attention to what they had. And, they didn’t enjoy having enough when there was more. Sin is often the result of ignoring our blessings and not caring for all we own.

That’s why the author of this proverb taught us that we should “know well the condition” of our flocks. We should give our attention to caring about and caring for all that God has provided in our lives. 

God’s priority goes beyond just taking care of our blessings. God wants us to enjoy them as well. We have all given a gift that remained unopened and unused. It’s sad to see it in the corner of someone’s closet while knowing it has never been enjoyed. That is a small taste of what God must feel when we don’t use the spiritual gifting he gave us in the Holy Spirit. We might think we don’t need the Spirit, but God knows we haven’t paid attention to all that he has provided.

What gifts have remained unopened or underappreciated in your life? 

Let’s make it our high priority to turn our attention toward God’s blessings and faithfully care for all we have been given. God’s priorities are wisdom. God’s gifting is his priority for your life. Wisdom is living with God’s high priorities, giving careful attention and complete gratitude for all of our blessings.