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What it Means for God to be Number One Priority
By Linda A. Annan
Published: July 12, 2010
I have often viewed myself to be one who had her priorities in order. God is number one on my list but within that set, I never took time to dissect the reason why He is my priority and what that meant to me. I choose Him to be number one because of the obvious: He inspires me, protects me, loves me unconditionally and so on. But what does this mean, really?
During one of my morning meditations, with Stormie Omartian’s book, “The Power of a Praying Woman,” I explored this idea and I must admit it was pretty eye-opening. This is what I learned:
That in order for me to have the right priorities, I need to be led by the Holy Spirit and have clear knowledge of God’s Word as well as understand what they should be.
In doing this, my first priority, I noted to myself, should be to love the Lord with all my heart, with all my soul and with all my mind (Mt. 22:37). What does it mean to me to love the Lord with all my heart, soul and mind? I challenged myself to come up with five answers:
- Make Him Lord of my life. (I cannot live for myself; instead I have to live for God and that means I must strive to please Him in everything that I do. I cannot rely on my emotions when responding to situations; I must work through things with God, leave room for His wrath (Ro. 12: 19) and listen to Him.
- I should seek Him first and go to Him first for direction.
- Read, absorb and obey His commands/Word
- Trust and have faith in Him
- Rely on Him completely
My second priority, I told myself, is to love my neighbor as myself just as it is instructed in Mt. 22:39. I then asked myself how I was doing with this part lately; I admitted I was not so great.
You see, just because we perform good deeds outwardly, – which is a wonderful thing – it sometimes masks the real issues we need to tackle. I could easily justify this aspect of Scripture with whatever good deeds I perform but that would contradict the Scripture which states that God looks at the heart first.
How am I loving people, really? My quiet introspection eventually led me to 1 Co. 13. After reading the Scripture I asked myself, “How often am I patient with people? How often do I envy or am I proud, rude, self-seeking and easily angered?” And here’s the big one, “How often do I keep record of wrongs?”
I came to the realization that whenever I deviate from these basic principles that I subscribe to, my priorities, even the ones within my first priority, God, fall apart. I also concluded that everything else in my life is cocooned in these two priorities. That if I am able to focus on nurturing these priorities, all the other priorities will exactly where they belong. In essence, loving God first and loving others become guiding compasses that will lead me in setting all other priorities in my life.
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