Priorities. We all struggle with this at one point in our lives. God has laid out a pretty clear line for what those priorities should look like. He wants to be first because if He's first in our lives, everything else seems to fall into place. What's that look like? We'll talk about that more in a minute. Our next priority should be our spouse. If we're married, our spouse should be our number two priority. Our kids come next. It is so important that our kids are not number two, and they're not number one. Kids need to know that the world doesn't revolve around them. The best thing you do for your kids is to let them know they're not nearly as important as your spouse. Our fourth priority should be our work. Notice that our work priority comes after our priority relationship with God, our relationship with our spouse, and our relationship with our kids. When work ends up being in front of any of those other things, our worlds are guaranteed to fall apart, crumbling into a disastrous consequence. Our fifth priority should be our volunteer work and our hobbies. Those things should never take any precedence over the previous four. Have Martha and I struggled with the order of these things? You bet. 

Martha and I love to work. For most of our lives, we have worked together. In fact, only about 8 years of our married life did we not work together. So, it's been very easy to reverse the priority and put work before marriage because we were always together. But that's not what God intended. 

What a blessing it is in our lives that God taught us to put prayer into every one of our days since the day we started dating. Hard to believe it's been over 41 years since Martha and I first met and 40 years since we started dating. Every one of those days, we have prayed together. Does it perfect keeping God at the top of our priority list? No, but it does remind us each and every day to re-center on Him. For both of us, the hour of our quiet time has varied. Sometimes it's been at night and sometimes in the morning, but we've always prioritized having quiet time. Obviously, when the little kids came along, the quiet time was harder to find, but we’ve tried to prioritize God in our day through prayer.  

Our number two priority is our spouse. Kids, work, hobbies, and volunteering should all come behind the priority of investing in our relationship with our spouse. Over the years, Martha and I have struggled with allowing ministry, work and even the kids to have priority over each other, but somehow every day, we've managed to spend time talking and keeping our friendship fresh. It just hasn't always been easy. 

When our kids came along five years into our marriage, keeping each other a priority was challenging. Of course, every new parent is excited about their children, and we were no different. But to remain in balance, making sure that God remained a priority and that our marriage relationship remained a priority, we had to ensure that our kids knew they weren't more important than those first two priorities. That wasn't easy. When our kids are young, they're pretty demanding. But as our kids grew older, certainly into their teenage and adult years, they knew our marriage relationship was more important than theirs. We didn't let our kids get involved in every possible sport or let them go to every activity at church or school because that would have compromised our family and marriage relationships. It was an ongoing battle, and something else always fought for our time. Our kids are now married and have children of their own, so they're experiencing some of the same things. They know that they're important in my life but not as important as my incredible wife. 

As I said at the beginning of this blog post, Martha and I love to work. We've had various jobs throughout the years, but we love to work. We like to clean up messes. We have fun organizing. We enjoy investing in people and solving problems. We love to work. The topic of keeping work in check has occupied more than a few evenings and weekends over the last 37 years. No question, both of us have had times when our jobs required way too much of our time and caused us to neglect our family. We even let our bosses interfere on our vacations. (What's with that, anyway? If you're a boss and your employees are on vacation, for crying out loud, just leave them alone! Your employees will be way better off when they return if you don’t bother them while they’re on vacation. That was just a side thought.) 

The final priority in our lives is our volunteer work and our hobbies. We've met so many people over the years whose volunteer work at church has interfered with everything, including their relationship with God. That seems kind of weird since they're at church volunteering for God. How come it interferes with their relationship with God? They're so busy doing things for God that they don't have time for God. Quick tip: don't volunteer to do something in any organization without your spouse and maybe even the kids being totally in agreement.  

Let's talk about hobbies as well. Hobbies are nice. It's sometimes nice just to escape from all the noise and ruckus of a family. But hobbies can be expensive. And they can get out of control. I know friends who have motorcycles and go on day-long rides during the weekend when their kids are home. That's just plain dumb. I know friends who golf all day on Saturday when their kids are home. That's just dumb, too. We have so little time with our families. Why would you take time away on a Saturday to be with other people when you only have your kids for 12 or 13 years before they start to discount your significance in their lives?  

Hobbies and volunteer work should be a very small part of our lives while our kids are growing up. And as the nest gets empty, find a hobby or volunteer work you can do with your spouse, or even invite one of your adult kids to join you. 

All of this is to say: managing your priorities is difficult. But God can help us clean up the mess of our priorities. He can help put Himself back on top and put your spouse second and your kids third and your work fourth and your hobbies and volunteering fifth. He can help! 

So, take a look at where your priorities stand today. If you have any questions about whether they're out of order, just ask your spouse or your kids, or look at your checkbook or calendar. If things are out of order, you likely have some cleaning up to do, some apologies to make, and some changes to implement. But it’s never too late to fix your priorities. Get number one figured out, and then the others should fall into place. You can do it! 

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