The evening of January 1, 2014, brought about something new for me: Crystal-Marie, editor of the Diva Diaries Blogazine, and I worked on boards – a vision board for her and what I’ll call a focus board for me. As we began wrapping up for the evening, one of the things she mentioned needing to add to her vision board was spirituality. Immediately, I looked at my board and realized I didn’t have any representation of spirituality on it. Sure, there was a Bible verse here or there, but nothing that truly identified my desires, passions, skills, or ideas relative to spirituality. I thought to myself, “Hmm, that’s not good.”
Later that night, I started thinking about my actual priorities – the ordering of priorities as I live day-to-day. A number of us may often verbalize our priorities in life to others or even write them down – never to revisit them on a daily basis. For example, my priorities are said to be: God first, family second, job third, and so on. And while we may, in our hearts, have honorable intentions with the spoken, what do our actions say?
The more I looked at my board and how it was set up, I had to reflect on what my real priorities were. Unfortunately for me, my day-to-day didn’t necessarily speak to God being first. Sure, I would read some scripture first thing after waking up and sure I would pray (sporadically), but what outside of that am I doing that would demonstrate an obvious, “God is first in her life?”
After some reflection, the unintended slip in priority was due to my taking for granted that God is always there and present in my life – something we should never do. I understood the effect of this, personally, as I looked at my little sister’s invite list for her graduation. Neither me nor our other sister were on the list, though others in our family were. She didn’t add us because she knew that we would be there. I completely understand where she was coming from, but unfortunately, that leaves the potential to forget.
Running across this passage also led to more reflection:
“ The Lord says: ‘These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is based on merely human rules they have been taught.” ~ Isaiah 29:13, NIV
If God is a real priority in your life, don’t operate as a machine by doing those things that you’re “supposed” to do. Really take the time to honor God and focus on and improve your relationship with Him. I know I will!
I challenge you to go back and re-evaluate the priorities in your life based on your day-to-day actions. As the saying goes, actions do speak louder than words. What do your actions say? If you find that your actions do not align with your verbal (or written) priorities, then what will it take for you to re-align?
Once you’ve taken those steps, apply it – don’t just talk about it, be about it!
