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Priority
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
Psalm 19.14
If you were having a conversation with someone about PRIORITY, how much of your mind would help in deciding what the PRIORITY is? The answer - ALL OF IT.
Scientists and psychologists would probably agree: Your mind has an impact upon your attitude, health, and behavior. Negative thoughts result in negative, unhealthy consequences. Positive thoughts yield positive, healthy results, If anything, for the sake of our health, we should work to have positive, optimistic thoughts. Why would you think otherwise, if you knew good thoughts would make you “feel good” or “feel better?”
There is such a premium placed on feeling good that feeling bad appears to be shameful. One man said, “It’s a sin for Christians not to be happy.” Really? Where do you read that in scripture? Where is that inspired passage? Well, the reason for such a statement is due to how much people are subscribing to not such a “feel good” path to health and length of life, but a “feel good” path to justify their thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors, regardless if they are biblically defined as SIN.
Feeling good has been a positive, spiritual message preached by so many religious leaders today, the sin would be not to “feel good” about who you are, what you do, how you live, and the attitudes you develop. The bottom line, however, is simple: People want to feel good because it feels good to feel good, including whatever your spiritual condition may be.
The longer we put PRIORITY on feeling good, the greater chance dangers increase. We lie to ourselves. We disregard truth. We deny error in ourselves and in others. We glorify sin. All of this and more is done to avoid “feeling bad.” Feelings become our reality, our comfort, our pleasure, and our hope. The PRIORITY becomes “what makes me happy.”
Although “feeling good” may lengthen our lives, there is a greater cause for “good thinking,” which in turn brings wellness and length of life (Ephesians 6.4). This is the reality which should be made PRIORITY. It is called thinking right about God and HIs will. Such thinking understands the sorrow of the world. Thinking right sees the most common reason why people “feel bad,” worry, experience bad health, and feel hopeless. It is sinful attitudes and actions.
The challenges and troubles in our lives would be “better” if we would enter the process of repentance. Second Corinthians 7.9-11 describes the part sorrow has in bringing one to the point of joy - salvation. The gospel has the power to show us the truth about where we are and where we should be. Becoming what we need to be is not a matter of how we “feel” about it, it is what God says needs to be done to remove the unpleasant and bring us to pleasant, joyful conditions. A lot of this change in thinking involves whether or not we believe God.
Right thinking about God is where the turnaround in PRIORITY begins. We should believe His intent is not to make us “feel good,” but to assure us, sustain us with His grace, deliver us from the temptations of evil, and guide us in every relationship and all conditions.
The commitment to this truth means placing right thinking as the highest priority over feeling good. Our appreciation for this will be witnessed in our desire to live right in the midst of a world where sorrow and pain live. This causes us to understand sin is what makes living in the world not “feel good,” not God. Give thanks to God for the alternative He gives in a world where unpleasant conditions abound.
Paul had anxiety for the churches (2 Corinthians 11.28), and had “great sorrow and unceasing pain” in his heart, not because more people were not “feeling good,” but because so many he knew were “feeling” their way through life in sin. Though it was not a “good feeling” for Paul, it was RIGHT to put PRIORITY upon his thinking of what God could do for those in sin.
PRIORITY is thinking about God leading us to His throne in heaven, where there will be no more tears. The time to end the sorrow of the world where people “feel good” about sin will come. Until then, pray for the health and strength to the right thing in this world in order to live in heaven where all will be good - FOREVER!
