First Things First
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Mgmt expert Stephen Covey
7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Mgmt expert Stephen Covey
Habit 3 "Putting first things first means organizing and executing around your most important priorities. It is living and being driven by the principles you value most, not by the agendas and forces surrounding you."
We’ve talked about the sermon on the mount as a kind of discipleship training program. Jesus is preaching a changed mindset due to the availability of the Kingdom of God, through Him.
Beginning in vs 19, Jesus makes clear the struggle we - human-beings created in God’s Image - have with setting priorities in our lives.
Matt 6:19
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Jesus says Don’t lay up treasures on earth;
Jesus says Don’t lay up treasures on earth;
Do lay up treasures in Heaven.
:: Scripture has 500 verses about prayer; fewer than that on faith; but over 2000 about money/mammon/materialism.
OBViously important! Determines our relationship with God, the fulfillment of his purpose in our lives, and our character/righteousness.
He gives us a principle to live by: what you treasure, he says, becomes the object of your heart’s desire.
He goes on to describe the eye as an indicator… sort of like a dipstick shows the oil level in an engine, the eye shows the desire of our heart: an eye can show us to be generous or covetous.
And then he lays down the truth behind it all:
24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Matt
This is why it is so important to put first things first: To paraphrase Covey: We’ve got to organize and execute our day-to-day lives
with God placed firmly as the first thing! This is disciple-training because first-things-first is a discipline we must practice: Covey calls it a habit to develop.
Jesus shows us here that it is a mark of godliness / righteousness that we are preoccupied with God and with heavenly treasure rather than earthly treasure.
In v. 25 Jesus tells us how to develop this mark… this Kingdom discipline... into daily habit.
[therefore] Command!
[means stop worrying.]
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
25
physical things.
[means never be worrying.]
31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
[means never be worrying.]
34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
sense is distraction:
40 But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things,
32 I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. 33 But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, 34 and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.
Pulled away from devotion to God....
the end of that is:
9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
and also, the end of that is:
19 but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.
9 And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Object lessons
26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
Matt 6:26
28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
9 But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
Jesus doesn’t sugar coat anything. He identifies the heart of the matter: Faith.
Ultimately, anxiety about tomorrow makes us unfaithful to God.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”
Matt 6:
Romans 1:17
33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
Seek First: implies a focus; a preoccupation. A choice of priority. A discipline; A habit.
1) Kingdom (God’s rule in our life) — an extension of the model prayer… your kingdom come....
2) Righteousness… your will be done.... (Christlike Character)
3) The promise… “all these things...”
Trust God. Put first things first in the living of your life.
And God will:
19 And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
far more abundantly that we could ask or think.
20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,
Where is my treasure? What are my priorities in life?