JON ALLEN

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.