Prioritizing Family

How is your family life?  Do you ever struggle in balancing life commitments with home commitments?  Work stress ever seem to take away the joy of your home life?

Many people have never heard of Jephthah nor can remember much about him.  Although he seems buried deeply in the Bible as a seemingly obsolete and insignificant figure, there is much we can learn from him (Judges 11-12:7) about the dangers of not prioritizing our family.

Jepthah had a bad family background and made some unwise decisions growing up.  Despite these challenges, Jephthah was extremely successful in life, being described as a "mighty warrior" and a leader of Israel for 6 years.  But in Judges 11:29-40 we read how Jephthah, made a rash vow that resulted in significant loss within his family in exchange for mere military victory.

Although we may not make the same level of mistake as Jephthah did, we often make small mistakes in prioritizing work, people, possessions, and passions over and above our family.  Maybe today is a day that God is calling you to reprioritize your family in your daily commitments and decisions!


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Sneaky, Sneaky Pride

When things are going good in life, a subtle danger always seems to creep in...pride.

Pride is so dangerous.  It places the emphasis on ourselves.  When times are bad, pride helps us justify our anger or frustration, or encourages us to throw a pity party of despair or depression.

When times are good, pride again places the emphasis on ourself, patting ourselves on the back, comparing ourselves to others, boasting in our accomplishments.  Paul knew that pride is ultimately the root sin...the sin of self-worship.

We must remember that the great things we see God doing in our lives are for His credit and glory and not our own.  Especially in church or ministry life, all spiritual success is the Lord's!  Ultimately we need to humbly realize that we are but tools in the Creator's hands...but isn't it amazing when we see Him work powerfully through us!

Maybe today is a day to stop and repent of thinking of ourselves more and better than we ought to.  Maybe today is a day of redirecting all praise and glory from our name to His name.  Let's never fail to give credit where credit is due!

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Regular Maintenance

So I am not the best example for regular and timely vehicle maintenance.  I usually hold off on taking my car in for service when things are terribly broken already or I am thousands of miles over my maintenance due date.  Sometimes I do the same thing with doctors and dentists...

Well the other day was different, something happened that had never happened to me before.

I didn't wait until something was broken...I didn't wait until I was thousands of miles overdue...I was intentional in being proactive and scheduled some vehicle maintenance.  On my way out of an oil change I noticed the odometer and the maintenance reminder to be exactly the same, to the mile!  Pretty cool, huh?

What would happen if we were more disciplined with our spiritual maintenance...if we didn't run to God only when things were broken?  If we didn't wait until we were thousands of miles "overdue" for maintenance?  Jesus is ready to heal, repair, grow, and fix us daily.  All we need to do is to be disciplined and proactive enough to seek His face!

When is "your next service due"?  Maybe in reading this you realize God is calling you to Himself NOW ... not later ... not tomorrow .... NOW!  So hit pause on whatever you have planned for the next few minutes and intentionally seek His face in the Word and in prayer, you won't regret it!

Let's seek Him and His kingdom as our priority each and every day.  Then we won't find ourselves so troubled about what the future holds.

"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.'" (Matthew 6:33-34 ESV)

Checkout TrustworthyWord.com online, on Facebook, or on Twitter for some great daily truths, encouragement, and resources from the Bible!