Time To Engage: "Prioritize To Jesus"

Time to Engage: The Journey to Discipleship

“Prioritize To Jesus”

Watch on YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AowWVNs98m0

Last week we began our new series entitled “Time of Engage” as we continue our vision that we’ve been called to undertake. And we looked at the overflowing presence of the Holy Spirit.

In our second message we’ll be looking at our need to prioritize Jesus, and we’re doing so at the start of this new year for a reason. You see, this is the time where we take stock of the prior year and make resolutions for the upcoming year usually centering upon the steps we need to take to undo some bad habits along with not repeating the mistakes from the past. It’s where we vow to make a better version of ourselves, like a computer program, where we’ll become the newest 2.0 upgrade.

The only problem is that these resolutions rarely if ever stick, and soon we find ourselves slipping back to our old 1.0 programing. This is seen in how many of these resolutions aren’t really new at all. They’re just rehashed from past years. They are the same old resolutions dressed up in a new set of clothes.

And when they don’t pan out as we had wanted them or hoped that they would, depression sets in, we get depressed, and we realize that such changes that we’re trying to make are more of a result of wishful thinking rather than their being a real possibility.

Our problem is in our inability to turn these resolves into committed actions, and the reason is because they’re directed towards the symptoms of what’s wrong, and not towards getting our lives right with God, which should and would resolve most if not all of these resolutions.

Instead of trying to juggle these different resolutions year after year, what we should be doing is prioritizing our lives to Jesus. 

Making Jesus our priority means that we’re putting Him first on our list. The reason our resolutions don’t last is because not only are there are too many of them, but more importantly, there’s not one overriding resolution that makes them all work. But when we make something a priority it will sway all of our decisions in its favor.

If our priority is Jesus, where we prioritize our lives to Him, then everything else falls into place. And to make Jesus our priority, we need to look to Jesus’s life and see what He prioritized. In other words, what were Jesus’s priorities and how can we make them our priority.

Now this is not easy, because far too often we think about what’s important to us. In other words, they’re our priorities and not what’s important to God, or God’s priorities, which should be our priorities.

We see this in a young man who had the right intentions, but the wrong priorities. The young man had all the things of the world, but he wanted the assurance of knowing he had eternal life.

And so, he asked Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life, and Jesus said, “If this is what you want, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17 paraphrase).

And this young man thought his priorities were where they needed to be, in other words, he thought he was in line with God saying that all of these things listed in the commandments he’s kept since his youth. Jesus then told him to sell his possessions and give it to the poor and then come and follow Him. It says the young man left sorrowful.

His number one priority was his wealth. His wealth seemed to get between him and God, and he was not about to give up his riches. The young man didn’t realize it, but he had broken the first commandment that says, “You shall have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3 NKJV)

So, what were Jesus’s priorities so we can align ourselves to them, and thus to Him?

1. God’s Kingdom

Jesus lived a kingdom life. His priority was to further God’s kingdom. We see this in the prayer He taught His disciples, or what is known as the Lord‘s prayer.  It starts off, saying this, “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth asit is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:10 KJV)

He also taught about God’s kingdom, or kingdom living through what’s referred to as the kingdom parables of Matthew 13, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” and then gave the parables of the man sowing seed, a hidden treasure, a net, and a mustard seed.

By living our lives for God’s Kingdom, we’re asking Him to exert His authority in our world so His kingdom purposes can be achieved, hence His prayer, “on earth as it is in heaven.”

In his letter to the Colossian church the Apostle Paul said that our redemption amounts to an exchange of rulership.