Successful people prioritize well. They order their lives and their decisions by the value and importance that each situation, each opportunity, each relationship, each connection, each conversation, each resource, and each moment of time offers.
Success is, in large part, the result of what you prioritize. So, people should not be surprised when they achieve economic prosperity but do not experience happiness or fulfillment like they expected they would, because happiness and fulfillment are not direct results of economic prosperity alone, and many of the potential paths to economic prosperity prioritize other qualities and results than happiness and fulfillment in the pursuit of financial wealth and well-being. This is not saying that happiness and fulfillment are not available to those who have achieved the highest standards of living, far from it. I’m simply observing that priorities are the fundamental driver in aligning your life for a certain outcome.
It is easy to get lost in the facts. Often it can seem easier to just settle for discovering the truth, instead of pressing through the facts and the truth to uncover the full heart of God. More than just seeing what God sees, or understanding what God explains, coming to appreciate what God values and what God prioritizes is essential in receiving everything that God has in store for you.
God is looking to bless you in ways beyond your biggest and best dreams. God is looking to provide for you in ways beyond your wildest imaginations. God is looking to flood you with favor above and beyond your greatest expectations. God is looking to fulfill His promises, His purposes, and His plans in you as soon as you can receive them.
The key to unlocking super-natural abundance is aligning your priorities with God’s priorities — spending your time, your focus, your attention, your effort, your resources, and your passion according to the objective value involved in any given situation or circumstance. Because when you align with God’s priorities more closely, you release God’s blessings in new and powerful ways.
So, let’s consider a basic example. God commanded us not to testify falsely against someone else or make false statements as a witness in a court of law. This is one of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai as a foundational principle for creating a civilized nation. It makes sense because justice can only be served if the facts of the case are collected and preserved as the basis for any decision rendered, without misinformation or corrupt influence being allowed as part of the consideration for a verdict. Justice is founded on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And God’s heart desires justice for all, which is why He opposes false witnesses.
God’s priority is truth for the sake of justice, and so God opposes the introduction of bribes, lies, fabrications, misplaced pity or favor, and other influences that compromise the availability of justice. Immediately following the Ten Commandments, God goes on to explain in greater depth what His priorities are around this point, and what matters to Him when it comes to how we approach justice,
“You must not pass along false rumors. You must not cooperate with evil people by lying on the witness stand. You must not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you are called to testify in a dispute, do not be swayed by the crowd to twist justice. And do not slant your testimony in favor of a person just because that person is poor. If you come upon your enemy’s ox or donkey that has strayed away, take it back to its owner. If you see that the donkey of someone who hates you has collapsed under its load, do not walk by. Instead, stop and help. In a lawsuit, you must not deny justice to the poor. Be sure never to charge anyone falsely with evil. Never sentence an innocent or blameless person to death, for I never declare a guilty person to be innocent. Take no bribes, for a bribe makes you ignore something that you clearly see. A bribe makes even a righteous person twist the truth. You must not oppress foreigners. You know what it’s like to be a foreigner, for you yourselves were once foreigners in the land of Egypt.” – Exodus 23
Reading through these examples and all the different ways that God explains that justice can be compromised, His heart and passion for justice is revealed. It is so much deeper, richer, and fuller than first appeared in the simple statement in the Ten Commandments. It is a deeply felt call for objective justice instead of mob rule, for impartial judgment instead of prejudice for or against any person rich or poor, loved or hated, friend or enemy, for the power of truth to convict the guilty and set the innocent free, and for the elimination of corrupting influences like gifts that cloud judgment and obstruct the delivery of justice.
So, to align with God’s priorities means that justice should be a higher priority than preference or favor or friendship or politics. Justice should be the first pursuit — and facts, information, and data should all be valued and used in the service of delivering justice.
Justice is clearly just one example, but you could choose any other area of your life and you would discover similar hierarchies of values that reveal God’s heart. There are factually better ways to order your life and factually worse ways to order your life. There are factually higher quality belief systems and cultural norms and factually lower quality belief systems and cultural norms. There are factually better ways to spend your time and resources and factually worse ways to spend your time and resources. There are factually better ways to remain fit, live healthy and strong, and pursue the best outcome given your circumstances and worse ways. The list goes on and on. But the key to winning, the key to success, the key to blessing is to realize that for all of the opinions, all of the perspectives, all of the subjective input that you receive, ultimately you will achieve the best results if your beliefs, your choices, and your priorities are better aligned to the objectively perfect priorities that God offers.
You have the opportunity to change, to improve, to evolve, to develop every single day. You have the ability to reflect on and consider the core beliefs, assumptions, and opinions that shape your decision making and provide a basis for your worldview. You have the power to receive better insights, better information, better feedback, better perspectives, and better support. You have the will of the living God, His full attention and passionate investment, and all of His promises, resources, and blessings coming your way. But if you choose not to prioritize them, if you decide to focus on something else or spend your time pursuing other avenues or investing your efforts and beliefs in different values — than your priorities will be what are standing between you and your destiny, and what you believe to be important will be what is standing between you and everything that God has in store for you.
So, take the time to consider not just what you believe, not just what you observe, not just what you experience — take the time to consider what you prioritize. You will discover that when you make improvements in your priorities then your beliefs, your insights, and your experience of life will improve as well and you will walk more easily into the destiny, into the blessings, into the favor, into the promises, into the fulfillment, success, peace, and joy that God has been offering you all along.
clarkechols
Aligning your priorities, beginning with the higher, inner, spiritual values, is indeed the foundation for authentic, happiness here and to eternity! There is a wonderful documentary that demonstrates this: http://www.thehappymovie.com/ Check it out!