The Power Of Priorities Series

The Power of Priorities

Series: REBOOT: Fresh Start for a New Year

Brad Bailey – January 22, 2023

Intro

Many of us likely heard about the US flight system going offline about 10 days ago. On that Wed morning… the entire infrastructure that coordinates and directs pilots went down… it required stopping all landing and take-off across the US… not since 9/11. What I heard reported is that on Tuesday they discovered that a data file appeared corrupted…and they decided to go through a reboot early Wednesday morning…and realized that it would take a while.

> And that captures something that can prove true for our own lives… there are times when change causes our inner operational systems to not operate well…and rebooting the system can restore that system… but it does mean going through a process of making adjustments.

We all have all experienced various changes.

So we are beginning the first weeks of this new year… in a series entitled REBOOT: Fresh Start to a New Year.

When a computer seems to be slow in operating…one of the issues can be too many programs running in the background.

Check and see what programs may be running in the background that are using some of the computing power….that don’t need to be running…that aren’t essential

In a similar way….our lives are greatly affected by becoming overloaded.

Overload - it is the greatest challenge to modern life.

We have become overloaded with information beyond what we can distill and discern.

We have become overloaded by the potential to do things faster and therefore do more than our souls can keep up with.

One journalist described America as “the land of the rushed." She wrote…

"We have proudly defined our American Lifestyle as 'life in the fast lane.' Even our sentences are peppered with such words as time crunch, fast food, rush hour, frequent flyer, expressway, overnight delivery, and rapid transit. The products and services we use further attest to our hurry: We send packages by Federal Express, use a long distance company called Sprint, manage our personal finances on Quicken, schedule our appointments on a Day Runner, diet with SlimFast, and swim in trunks made by Speedo. [1]

We have become overloaded with options.

Until recently… the common human life worked the field they had… married one of the few eligible lives in their village….and got their milk from the same cow.

Today? > PICTURES OF SHOPPING

The essence of overload is this…

“When everything matters, nothing really matters.”

When everything is important…nothing is important.

Illus –

Throughout my teenage years I had a GR dog named Genny… tennis ball was her life focus… and when she retrieved it… retuned… proud… wagging… her calling was complete.

One year I invited my friends to come celebrate her birthday… one showed up with a huge box of tennis balls he had collected. So he went across the yard… dumped them out across the grass…and we let her go.

What happened… she pick up one…began to make her way back a a retriever does…but then… looked down upon others… and with dismay… feeling compelled to get them… would have to drop the first to get another…but then did this over and over. In that moment, a saw a dog unable to fulfill her nature freely.

> Many of us may feel our lives are like that… too many balls spread out across our path… never able to feel the joy of completion.

> It’s hard to find rest in the vast sea of potential ‘shoulds’ we’ve created.

I feel I never end the day… having finished everything.

And as I have shared in the past… I have seen something different in Jesus…something that invites me into a better way of operating.

I am struck by what Jesus prayed as he came to the end of his earthly life.

John 17:1-4

Jesus … looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.

He declared the moment that has come. The potential to know God… to be reconciled with God… had been completed.

And the final here…verse 4… is worth pausing to take in…

“I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.”

> Jesus is able to express this unqualified sense of completion.

I have never felt I have ever finished all the tasks on my list on any given day….and here …. the one sent to redeem the world… says he has finished the work he was given to do.