Kingdom Priorities
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On Monday nights, I have been attending a class called Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (www.perspectives.org). In this class we are learning not only about God’s mission to reconcile the world’s peoples to himself, but the history of missions as well as modern missions techniques. During the last class, we did a visual on how little of the average church’s money goes to missions and specifically to unreached people (5% and ½% of the average church budget respectively). When the comments time was opened up, people were bemoaning how their churches were not spending enough on missions and wondering why.
When it came time for me to speak, I threw out this: Every church is people, and our churches reflect the value of the people that are part of each community. So I challenged them to look at their own wallets and then ask why the church does not spend what it should on missions. In our day of people being consumers of religious goods and services, people want nice buildings and lots of programs and staff to meet their “needs.”
My question for us is simply this – what moves us? What are our real priorities? Are they in alignment with God’s priorities?
In Ecclesiastes 3 we learn there are seasons of life, and we also understand priorities can shift some when seasons change. I have a friend whose priorities right now have a lot to do with his wife’s health. I am in a busy season with my business—spring is when a lot of businesses do some computer and server upgrading.
Whatever season we are in, we can know our priorities by looking at two things: how we spend our time and how we spend our money. Time and money are the daily currencies of life. We all get the same 1,440 minutes per day. We all have differing financial means as God has granted. But for each of us we can evaluate priorities in our current season by how we are spending those currencies.
The tool to measure those priorities is given to us by Jesus.
Matthew 6:24-34 "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. 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? 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? 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? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Notice the immediate context is how we are using our financial resources. But the principle could just as easily be used for time. Are not time and money the two things we constantly worry about? We never have enough time and the money runs out before the month.
How often have we heard Jesus’ words in verse 33 and thought, “Yes, that is the cure to my ills.” Yet within a day or two we are back to seeking our own Kingdom, not even thinking about how we spend our time and money, and wondering why we are so worked up!
As with so many things in the Kingdom economy, the solution is the opposite of what we think it is. The cure for our anxieties is not to make more money or somehow create more time margin in our lives. The cure is to re-orient those things toward Jesus and be willing to let Him guide our use of those resources. Only He has the unlimited abundance of both to share, but they are only shared in so far as they are used for the Kingdom and His glory.