Wednesday 17 May 2017

Set Your Priorities Correctly ... For Your Success

Keeping up with writing articles for my blog has not been the easiest thing especially in the past few weeks. The several things that compete for my time daily have made it a real struggle; yet, it is something I believe I should do and writing it gives me great pleasure. The truth is, we only have twenty-four hours in one day so there will always be several different things competing for our attention. The things we choose to do each day, to a large extent, determine whether or not we will make a success of life. If we neglect the ones that are of utmost importance for those that could wait or can even be left undone, then we have major challenges. Setting our priorities right daily is one of the most important things we can do for ourselves daily. From day to day, our order of priorities may change and not necessarily because any particular ‘to do’ is less important than the other but at a particular time or day, one thing is most needful and it is important to make the right judgement call as to what is most needful and do it. We must learn to prioritize correctly.  
James 4: 17 “Remember it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it.”

To not do what is right is bad inspite of the excuse or reasoning that made one postpone. To not even know what to do is worse which is why God gave us a guide in the person of the Holy Spirit who would always let us know what we ought to do. As I get older, I realize more and more that prioritizing correctly is a must for success in life. Even prioritizing correctly when to speak can make or mar a request. It is of utmost importance to know what is appropriate and the appropriate time to do the appropriate. Prioritizing wrongly can be very costly and may cause irreparable damage. Though Esther understood the magnitude of the problems the Jews faced, she realized that she need to seek God and His counsel for her to have good success with the King Ahasuerus.

Proverbs 3: 27 “Do not withhold good from those who deserve it when it’s in your power …”

Hebrews 5: Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.

Good is not necessarily nice; it is the most appropriate thing, done or said at the most appropriate time. Something may be nice but inappropriate and as such, not good. A good thing done at the wrong time, may become very wrong. Prioritizing correctly is our responsibility and a major one. It is one of those things God won’t do for us. He does all that is required to help us correctly determine what is needful, including even giving us a Helper in the person of The Holy Spirit; but He will not make that judgment call for us. To priories correctly, God has left us to engage our brains whilst remaining connected to our God given Helper who would provide us with enough information and grace to aid us as we prioritize. If we allow Him guide us, He would ensure that we do things in the right order.  Indeed a wise man is not often the man who knows everything but one who knows enough to appropriately discern what is right to say or do in the moment. It is not always right because it sounds nice. There is an appropriate time for everything; it is best to act when it is right to do so and/or speak when it is right to do so. Any act out of its season cannot be in sync.

Ecclesiastes 3: 1 “For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.”

Prioritizing correctly starts with giving God His rightful place. If God is in charge in any life, we are guided right. He takes the job of being Lord seriously. His reason for taking on that job in any life that yields to Him is to ensure that such lives come to “and expected end” which is always good because God never does evil so that everything orchestrated by Him for His children is good. The fact that He is Lord in a life suggests that the life is fully yielded to Him and does not resist Him. It takes a deliberateness to yield to God and remain yielded to Him. To have Him and our relationship with Him at the very top of our priority is not something that happens carelessly because there are several other things competing for that place. We must make effort to ensure that our relationship with Him always has pride of place in our lives. When believers do not prioritize their relationship with God correctly, most of their decisions would be wrong and they would ultimately end up less than God planned for them. Let us reorder our priorities if need be, that we may fulfill our destiny.