You can improve your life by removing the ambivalence about priorities …

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Adding ambivalence into setting priorities is a quick route to making your life more difficult and misdirected.

The late Haddon Robinson noted one old recipe for rabbit started out with this injunction: “First catch the rabbit.” Robinson explained, “The writer knew how to put first things first. That’s what we do when we establish priorities — we put the things that should be in first place in their proper order.”

Jesus helps us remove ambivalence about what should be our top priorities by spelling them out for us, such as:

“Jesus replied, ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments,” Matthew 22:37-40.

“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need,” Matthew 6:33.

And for the church:

“Jesus came and told his disciples, ‘I have been given all authority in heaven and on earth. Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” Matthew 28:18-20.

Jesus sets a clear order for us:

    • Love God first and foremost.
    • Love your neighbor as yourself.
    • Seek the kingdom of God.
    • Go make disciples of all the nations.

There’s no need for us to be ambivalent about what our priorities are because Jesus teaches us what they should be! It’s only when we try to add to, subtract from, or attempt to modify what Jesus teaches that we become ambivalent about what is really important and how to order our lives. That ambivalence will fuel other desires that will entice and pull us away into sin. That’s why Jesus taught that to truly be His disciple, we have to die to self and embrace His order of priorities for living:

“Then he said to the crowd, ‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me,'” Luke 9:23.

Can you see how it simplifies and improves your life if you adopt fully what Jesus teaches about what our priorities must be? To try to make anything else a priority that competes with what Jesus says should be our priorities is to stray from specifically following Jesus along His Way.

Are you making your life more difficult by introducing a measure of ambivalence into setting YOUR priorities? Or have you given up your own way and embraced the priorities Jesus teaches us?

Scotty