Forward to a New YearSample

Choose Your Priorities 

Have you ever felt like your life was turned upside down? Maybe you’ve felt like you were at the end of your rope, stretched to the breaking point, or stuck in a situation you couldn’t escape. Feeling powerless to change anything is real, and it can keep you frozen in place. But according to today’s verse, God’s work keeps going, even when we feel stuck.

You see, our mighty God has a plan for your life, and He doesn’t intend to stop in mid-design! You were created for an ever-fruitful, flourishing, thriving life. 

So how do you get unstuck and move forward into that kind of life? We’ve already talked about reviving your dreams and relying on prayer. Now I want to tell you about the power of refocusing your priorities. 

Start by accepting the fact that everything is not equally important. Almost every adult struggles with this today. We become so distracted by molehills that we can’t charge up the mountain. Your cluttered world bombards you with thousands of bits of data every day. No wonder you’re distracted! It’s easy for the most important things to be lost. That’s why you must acknowledge that not every activity is vital. Not every situation is eternal.

Priorities keep you focused and help you accomplish what really matters, because the best way forward is . . . forward!

Once you’ve understood the significance of priorities, the next step to getting unstuck is to actually determine the most important things in your life. To do that you need the clarity to know what’s best. Start by asking what’s most important to God. What isn’t as important to Him? What do you need to focus on in your life, and what can you start deleting?

To generate forward momentum, evaluate your activities. Delete things of less importance to keep things of greater worth. I can’t give you an itemized list of what should be important to you. But in Mark 12, Jesus gave us three principles that should be central to everyone’s life.

‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these” (Mark 12:29–31).

What an answer! Jesus boiled down the contents of the entire Old Testament into one overarching, overwhelming priority: love. Love—as God defines love—is life’s ultimate priority.

But keeping priorities correctly aligned is a daily challenge. The first step is knowing what’s at the top of the list. Once that’s settled, other things fall into place more naturally. What comes first is clear: love—for God, for others, and then for ourselves.

It’s time to make love our top priority. Sometimes our lives need to be cleaned out. A lot of our activities and attitudes should be jettisoned. Other interests need to be tucked away in an orderly place on our calendars. It’s only possible to know what’s worth keeping when you have the clarity to know what’s best and when you understand the priority of love. Love shows us the way forward, and gives us the momentum to come unstuck and start moving again.

Respond

1. When you look at the way you’ve been spending your time, what jumps out at you as a “molehill” instead of a mountain? What could you knock down the priority list that would give you more energy and space? 

2. Take some time to identify the ten most important priorities in your life. How are they powered by love? Does anything need to move up or down that list in importance, when you view it through the ultimate priority of love?  

3. Now lay out your schedule and to-do list for the coming days. Keeping in mind that God is completing a good work in you, what small actions can you add that prioritize love for God, for others, and for yourself each day? What can you say “no” or “later” to in order to devote your time to moving forward with clearer priorities?