JON ALLEN

I am really excited this week because my family is going to be visiting this weekend. This will be the first time they will get to host all of them at the same time. We will have Dad, Mom, Jen, Jon, Jared, and Kim all staying with us. Our house is going to look like a motel! It should be fun though, I always like seeing my family and catching up. I really count myself blessed to have a family as strong as I do. Looking around our community it is getting harder and harder to find families that are still together. It seems like divorces are as common as oil changes… change your spouse every 3 years or 3,000 arguments. Sad, isn’t it.

A message to you husbands and wives… your responsibility is not to yourself alone. When you got married you took on a responsibility for your spouse as well. Your commitment was not only to them, but to God as well. You entered a covenant relationship which is not to be broken. I know that marriage is not always easy, I know it takes work, but remember that love is a choice, not a feeling. You either choose to uphold your covenant or you don’t. Don’t give up on your promises to God, embrace them, cherish them.

And if your parents didn’t set a great example for you, then choose to be different. Stay true to your promise. It reminds me of the lyrics to an Everclear song (not necessarily endorsing the band)… “My daddy gave me a name, then he walked away… Now I’m a grown man, with a child of my own. And I swear I’m not gonna let her know all the pain I have known.” Those lyrics speak to breaking cycles. Don’t let the mistakes your parents made in their marriage break yours apart too, choose to break the cycle, break the chains.

I thank God regularly that he gave me parents who held their vows. They set a tremendous example for me as a couple and as parents. I can’t thank them enough for that. Be that example in your marriage as well, my prayer is that I will too.

God has really been laying this issue of priority on my heart lately. We will be talking about it this weekend in the message and our discussion as a staff really brought it to the forefront for me.

One thing that many pastors deal with is their inability to put their life in priority. I believe that the bible gives us an order of importance that our life should fall into. Our personal relationship with God, our relationship with our spouse, our relationship with our children, our relationship with our extended family, our job, our church, and everything else after that. We make a huge mistake when we get these things out of order!

The problem for many pastors is that we can end up substituting our role as a pastor for our personal relationship with God. We spend so much time planning for the church, so much time investing in people, we begin to identify our relationship with God through our job as a minister. However, although the work of the church is important, it is not a substitute for our relationship through Christ. What often happens, as the pastors identity in Christ gets funneled through the church, the church gets put at the top of his priority list. I have seen way too many pastors make this mistake and the role as a pastor begins to take him away from his family more and more.

With our first son on the way, I have been thinking about this more than ever. As most of you know already, I think about the church all the time. It consumes my life. If I am not careful, I could work all day, every day.

But I have a responsibility as an example to the church to live a life of priority. That means that my relationship with God comes first, Jess comes second, JD comes third, and the church comes fourth. I know that is not what some people are used to, some people grew up with a pastor that put the church first, many times before his own family. I would be greatly regretful if I got to the end of my life, looked back, and realized that I had not lived a life of priority.

My challenge to you is that you is to live a life of priority. When you are with your spouse, turn your cell phone off. When you are with your kids, don’t check your email. Eat dinner with your family. Take a day off (and don’t do any work). Spend time with God… and not just on Saturday night or Sunday morning.