Knowing my priorities in life has been the number one prevention of stress in life, that is when I actually stick to my priorities. My number one priority is my relationship with God – this means I make a point to be disciplined in knowing God and letting God know me. The second priority is with my wife – when my relationship with God is right it helps me be the Godly husband that flows out of a right relationship with God. My third priority is to my family as a whole – when Alexis and I are right, our household is right, and together we can minister with compassion, love, and righteousness to others. From there flows everything else, ministry (missions, young adults, small group, etc), friends, work, etc.
Yet what does a priority look like? How do I actually live these out as priorities? The most tangible way for us has been to actually schedule each priority out. I take my relationship with God and put Him on my calendar first – for me that looks like studying His word (so I put it on my calendar to do this each morning), being on a worship team (this is personally my number one way of connecting intimately with God), and making my daily decisions prayerfully. Then the rest of our calendar is filled based on our stated priorities, in order, and one does not supercede the other, nor do other random things that seem to fly at us from all corners.
And in other news this is my 1,001st post since November of 2002 – neat!