Priorities

Jesus is teaching us to stop loving things and using people and start using things and loving people.

A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its...

Sometimes to follow in the footsteps of Jesus is to walk away from others or to let them walk away from us.

Pastor: Gracious Father, You have chosen us for a purpose – that we might bear lasting fruit for Your Kingdom. You call us to walk humbly before You and to share in the struggle with the least of thes...

Be less concerned with what you have than with what you are.

We cannot prioritize our doing before being, our assignment before healing, our service before freedom.

I believe in God and the whole business, but I love women best, music and science next, whiskey next, God fourth, and my fellowman hardly at all.”

In truth, people can generally make time for what they choose to do; it is not really the time but the will that is lacking.

You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, nonapologetically, to say “no” to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger “yes” burn...

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.

Context Ritual Purity The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for ...

Context Ritual Purity The most important broad contextual issue to address with this passage is the concept of ritual purity, and the ways in which this served as a boundary and identity marker for ...

Prayer of Confession God, there are times when we are impatient. We are impatient with you. We want to know all the answers. We get frustrated when we don’t see your justice. Your plans and your way...

Heavenly Father, we confess that we often place value in things that are important, but which may not be fully reflective of your desires. We admit that we settle for things that seem good, but don’t ...

It’s too easy for us, God to place other things before you. We fail to completely follow your will, we live for ourselves, and we settle into sinful ways of life. Please help us to see that there’s mo...

Loving and grace-filled God, we confess that it is difficult to keep you first in our lives. There are so many urgent demands on us that we find it hard to focus ourselves on you. The culture around u...

Loving God, please forgive us of the times when we don’t make it our number one priority to follow you. For the times when we focus too much on things that distract us from you, we repent. We are sorr...

ONE VOICE: Joel 2:13 Return to the Lord, your God, for he is gracious and merciful ALL: We drift away from our true home We forget we are Your beloved We forget we are not God Rend our hearts, O Go...

An excellent way to test people’s values is to observe what we do when we don’t have to do anything, how we spend our leisure time, how we spend our extra money.

Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? "Hear O Israel..." The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) commands the Israelites to love the Lord their God with heart, soul, and m...

AIM Commentary Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? "Hear O Israel..." The Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) commands the Israelites to love the Lord their God with h...

Unless God begins to move in my heart - and my wallet, my schedule and my to do list - I’ll never receive His best for me.

The Lord’s Prayer is designed to help us make this change: a change of priority, not a change of content. This prayer doesn’t pretend that pain and hunger aren’t real. Some religions say that; Jesus d...

The American philosopher and psychologist William James once defined human attention as a “withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opp...

If you want to lead a balanced life, decide how many hours you want to work and stick to your guns. Put work appointments on your calendar in pencil, but put your family commitments in pen. Love is ti...

We have the freedom to make choices that can lead to blessing and favor or painful consequences. Battling busyness requires me to take a look inside my heart to make sure that my choices align with my...

How do you define what it means to “make a sacrifice?” We say we sacrifice for our family, or sacrifice for our careers. We speak of Jesus sacrificing himself so that we can experience eternal life. A...

Recently I was running the vision of our church by my thera­pist, who is this Jesus-loving, ubersmart PhD. Our dream was to re-architect our communities around apprenticeship to Jesus. (That feels so ...

An emissary from a learned society came to invite the eminent scientist Louie Agassiz to address its members. Agassiz refused on the grounds that lectures of this sort took up too much time that shoul...