Have you ever needed to clean up a house that was super messy? A lot of people get pretty anxious about that, not knowing where to start with the process. When I look at something like that, my mind breaks the mess down into parts. First, the trash. Second, clothes. Etc. I use a hierarchy to determine my next steps.

Our lives are filled with hierarchies.

Defined: a system in which people or things are put at various levels or ranks according to their importance.

Whether you believe it or not, you automatically rank the various things in your life. We do this at home, at work, even mentally with our thought processes. Sometimes we are good at this. Most times we are bad at it.

How do you normally rank things in your life? More importantly:
What is the driving factor behind why you align that thing in that specific hierarchy?

Last week I talked about core values and how you need to establish a vision for your family. Core values, that vision, helps guide these kind of decisions so that you an effectively align all the things in your life. Just like our core values help us align hierarchies in the church, core values help align hierarchies in your life.

What is the value that determines your hierarchical alignment?
Top three for most people: personal impact, stress impact, financial impact

What should determine how you align hierarchies?

It is interesting that the word hierarchy comes from two Latin words that mean “sacred ruler.” A ruler measures. Sacred means holy, set apart. The way we should align the hierarchies in our lives is by a holy measurement.

What does this mean? Key point here.
It means the Word of God is how we are supposed to orient and align our lives.

1. The Standard for Hierarchies
2 Timothy 3:16-17
16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

This metric, the Word of God, is the standard by which we govern our lives.
It is the standard: for truth, as a guide for daily life, as a way to know what is right, as a way to know how to interact with others, as a way to know how to live for God. In fact, your very life is rooted in this standard.

Matthew 4:4
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God

If you are going to align hierarchies in your life according to a holy measurement, you have to know what that standard is to begin with. If you are going to have a properly aligned marriage, it takes knowing the standard.The same goes for family, friends, church, work, and anything else.

Question: Are you using the Word of God to determine the hierarchies in your life? Since this is a series on relationships, let me ask it like this:
How do you rank your relationships in terms of importance?

Acts 1:8
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.

I am sure you are wondering what in the world this has to do with how your life is aligned. Jesus is telling the disciples their next steps in terms of receiving the Holy Spirit, but he is also giving them - and us too - the order by which our lives should be ordered.

Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Ends of the Earth.

When I first took the youth ministry job at New Covenant in 2012, my first order of business was realigning the hierarchy or what was important in terms of that specific ministry. The guy before me was super focused on serving the high school. Nothing wrong with that, but if you are spending all of your time and resources on the school but the youth ministry of a 1000 member church has 8 kids, that is a problem. It’s wrong to feed the neighbors while you kids starve.

This approach created problems, not just low numbers, but low development. Spiritual Life Hack: Problems are signs of potential hierarchy issues.

He was doing great in the schools, but there was no health in the youth ministry at the church. Maybe he was super evangelistic and didn’t know how to develop people beyond salvation. Maybe the affirmation from the school ministry was more enticing than feeling like he was failing in the youth ministry. Or maybe he’d messed up the hierarchy.

Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, Ends of the Earth.
Here’s a map to help illustrate.

What’s the point?
If you are going to make a lasting impact, you cannot mess up the order in the hierarchy. You can’t skip steps. You can’t jump ahead. And you can’t ignore Jerusalem and expect to have success in Judea.

Let me say it plainly:
If your job is more important than your wife, if your hobby is more important than your kids, if your wants are more important than your needs, you are not only misaligning hierarchies, you will find you fail in them all.

So what is the hierarchy that we see through this principle modeled in Acts 1?
Married folks: Jesus, wife, kids, family/friends, everything else.
Single folks with kids: Jesus, kids, family/friends, everything else.
Single no kids: Jesus, family/friends, everything else.

Let me give you a real life example of this:
One thing I see the most that causes the biggest issues in marriages is that the kids are number one. Everything revolves around the kids. Kid CEO is a great book about how to correct this. You kid is not the most important person in your life. Your spouse is. If your kid is the most important person in your life you will find yourself sitting across the table from a complete stranger when little Timmy goes off to college.

Ephesians 5:31
For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.

You don’t leave and cleave to your child, but to your spouse. When this hierarchy is misaligned, the relationship suffers. You will see emotional disconnection between the two spouses, and often, while the mother clings to the child, the father fills the void typically with a hobby or something outside the home.

When it comes to your family, hierarchy is important. Your spouse is more important than your kids, your family, anything else. A quick change you can make to properly align this hierarchy is when you get home, go straight to your spouse and greet them first. Let your kids see that your spouse is the priority. You might think this makes the kid feel unimportant, but that is incorrect. The best thing you can give your kids is a strong, healthy marriage. Your kids have their best chance when a father and mother are in a strong, committed, healthy relationship. It is foundation building. But you cannot have that relationship with your spouse if they are third on your list.

I realize you might be here with kids and no spouse. I am sure that was not the plan, but this doesn’t mean your kids don’t have a chance! Just like God’s grace can cover sin, his grace can also fill in the gaps in your family.
He does that in a few ways, but some are: a new spouse and the church family. One of the main roles of the church family is to fill the gaps that might exist in your own family. Galatians 6 - bear one another’s burdens!

God’s Word is what we use to align hierarchies, and these hierarchies are so important because of the inherent value they give.

If my hierarchies are aligned properly, it means:
my relationship with Jesus is healthy and growing, my relationship with my wife is vibrant and full of love, my relationship with my kids is strong and stable, and when it comes to my friends, my job, the church, everything else, I am able to be effective because not only do I have the appropriate support structure around me, but because I am effectively assigning value to those around me based on my willingness to follow God’ advice on structure.

Matthew 6 says seek first the kingdom. Ephesians 5 says I am supposed to love my wife life I love myself, like Jesus loves the church. Proverbs 22 says train up kids in the way they should go. 1 Timothy 5:8 says if anyone does not provide for his own family, and especially for his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever. This is Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the Ends of the Earth.

Why is this hierarchy so important?
Because if you are nothing with Jesus, you can be nothing for your spouse.
If you are nothing with your spouse, you can be nothing for your kids.
If you are nothing with your kids, you can be nothing for anyone else.

Hierarchies need to be properly aligned. How do we know if they are misaligned?

2. Identifying Misalignments
How do we know if we are in proper alignment?

Think about the way your life’s hierarchies are set up. What is most important to you? If I followed you around for one week, I’d know.

Now…if you followed me around for one week, you’d think that this new facility was the most important thing in my life based on the fact that it has taken so much of my bandwidth over the last several weeks. I want you to understand the difference between a season and a lifestyle. I might have to work more hours for a season, but my lifestyle is that I still make the important things the important things.

When I choose work over my spouse and kids consistently, I am misaligned. The expected result is always negative.

Again, what is most important to you?
If you were to make that list right now (top 5 most important things), what would that list look like? Follow up: would your actions reflect that?

Questions:
Marriage
- Is there unrest between you and your spouse right now?
- Do you feel at a distance or at the minimum that something is not right?
- Do you feel like you don’t really know your spouse that well anymore?
- Does your spouse constantly harp, often using phrases like you always or you never?

Family
- Is there chaos in your home constantly?
- Does your kid run the house (everything in your life circles around what is going on in their life)?
- If I asked, would your kids know that you love Jesus and your spouse more than anything in the world?
- Are you kids having behavioral issues outside the home?

General
- Do you feel like something is missing in your life?
- Do you feel like you can’t seem to please anyone around you?
- Are you constantly being pulled by multiple things causing youth feel like you will never be enough?

Spiritually
- Do you feel far from God?
- Do you rarely pray/read the Word?
- Does it seem like God is an acquaintance rather than a close friend?

These are all signs that there are hierarchical issues in your life. It isn’t a guarantee that there are, but a possible indicator. That means evaluating those hierarchies is important.

Are you making the most important things the most important things?

Jesus called out the rich young man’s misalignment and asked him to follow.
Matthew 19:21
If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.

Joseph was faced with the tough choice of putting Mary away or embracing her and enduring the accusations of those around him.
Matthew 1:24
Then Joseph, being aroused from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife

Nathan calls out David’s misalignment with Bathsheba.
Jesus rebukes Peter for his misalignment in terms of Jesus’ purpose.
Jesus appears to Saul to let Saul know what is actually important.

You can identify misalignments because of negative results around you, but never underestimate the power of a legitimate relationship with God and his ability to use his Word, his voice, his people, and yes, even the chaos around you to reorient your life into the right hierarchy.

3. The Right Order
Jesus, spouse, kids, family/friends, everything else.

We can go two directions from here. One direction is legalism. This is what Jesus was railing against in Matthew 23. There are a series of “woe” comments where Jesus chastises them for embracing legalism and ignoring the intent.

Matthew 23:4
For they bind heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders

This message about realigning hierarchies is not meant to put a burden on you.
In fact the goal of today is the opposite, the OTHER direction: that you realign so you can eliminate some of the stress and chaos from your life.

What are the most important things?

How would your life change if you intentionally defined a hierarchy?
Let’s do that now. If you are married with kids, the first three are super easy. Jesus. Spouse. Kids.

That means that there’s nothing in this entire world that is more important than these three. Sometimes you have to make adjustments for work or in a season, but the work, the season, nothing should be valued higher than these three relationships. So many times people value work over these relationships because they want to be a good provider. I get it, but how horrible would it be to be able to provide a fancy house and the best clothes, but you have no relationship with any of them? How terrible would it be to give them the world in terms of possessions but they wake up one morning in hell for eternity?

What about you and your spouse?
When is the last time you had a date night? “Well we are so busy and yada yada.” You are not telling me you are too busy. You are telling me your hierarchy is wrong. You make time for what is important. That simple.

What about you and Jesus?
There is not a single relationship that matters more than one with Jesus. You can believe that now or you will discover it later, but your job can’t save you, money can’t save you, hobbies can’t save you. NOTHING matters more than Jesus, but if he is so low a priority that you don’t have time to pray or dive into his word, what could be more important?


If you aren’t married but have kids, Jesus, kids, family/friends, everything else. If you aren’t married and have no kids, Jesus, family, friends, everything else.

One last thing: don’ take the mistake of believing that people are the only things we misalign. Some of us are under so much stress and anxiety and fear you’d think we’d asked them to marry us, not our spouse. Stress, fear, and anxiety are the results of the flesh, not the Spirit. You might need to realign your mental hierarchies as well.

If you are not in proper alignment, it is time to get it right!

How?
Stop giving high priority to low priority things.
Your spouse is high priority. Fishing isn’t. Your kids are high priority. TikTok isn’t. Jesus is high priority. Sleep isn’t. Belief, trust, faithfulness are high priority. Fear, stress, and anxiety aren’t.

Stop prioritizing things that devalue relationships. Start prioritizing things that value them. If you don’t know where to start, first ask the Holy Spirit, but second, share it with your DGroup or pray with someone here at the end.

This is where we are going to end today.

Are your hierarchies aligned properly?
If so, then praise the Lord.

If not, ask the Holy Spirit now:
What is one thing you want me to do to fix this?

As Jesus is being delivered to be crucified, we see Peter make some hierarchy issues. He argues with Jesus about being faithful. He cuts the ear off a guard. He denies he knew Jesus because he was scared of what people would say. Thrice. Then he flees to weep bitterly, abandoning Jesus at the cross. Three days later he rushes to the tomb, only to have his heart crushed by Jesus not being there. He lost sight of what was important, and not he’d lost everything.

I wonder if Peter had a moment when he thought back to when he’d first met Jesus. Everything was so clear back then. He knew who he was. He knew who Jesus was. He wasn’t worried about what people said or thought. All that mattered was Jesus.

I’m not sure if Peter thought about that, but interestingly enough, when Jesus appeared to Peter in John 21, it was almost a carbon copy of the first time they’d met. The sorrow, the regret, the pain he must have felt for denying Jesus was, I could only imagine, unbearable. And even though Jesus knew Peter had completely destroyed that hierarchy, he didn’t respond with anger or hate. He loved Peter, welcomed him back, and reminded him of his purpose.

We see Peter several weeks later stand up in the middle of Jerusalem and give a passionate, fiery presentation of the Gospel that not only blasted the religious leaders, but moved the people.

Acts 2:37-39
37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” 38 Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”

He could have said it like this:
“Get right with Jesus for the sake of you (and your spouse which is you too), your children, and everyone else.”

Or like this:
“Realign your hierarchy.”

Jesus. Spouse. Kids. Family/Friends. Everyone else.

How do you need to realign your hierarchy today?

Let’s pray.

What is the Holy Spirit saying to you through this message?

How does he want you to respond?