Camy here. Recently, I’ve been reading The Relationship Principles of Jesus by Tom Holladay because my church is doing the 40 Days of Love campaign.
The book is pretty good. What I’ve gotten out of it this week is that Jesus always put His relationships with God and people before other things like money and tasks.
My pastor talked on Sunday about how we can’t really give our lives to anyone because we’re going to die eventually anyway. But we can give time--we give our time to someone else.
Jesus did that. He gave time to God. He gave time to people. (He also gave His life, in a truer sense than we could, but that’s another topic.)
It made me take a good look at my priorities. Often I’ll spend time in my Bible after I handle “pressing emails.” But really, how pressing is something that can be put off for an hour? If it were really pressing, the person would have called me, right?
And God has blessed me abundantly—but how am I using my time in taking care of my work? Am I being as efficient and disciplined as I should be? Am I overworking? Am I being lazy? Am I being inefficient or not working as well as I could?
In my relationship with Jesus, I want to please Him in what He’s given to me. If I don’t make Him a priority, then my goal in anything I do is not for God, it’s for me.
How about you? Do you need to reprioritize something in your life?
Camy Tang lives in San Jose, California. She previously worked in biology research, and she is a staff worker for her church youth group. She runs the Story Sensei critique service, and her latest Asian chick lit novel, Single Sashimi, is out now. Join her newsletter YahooGroup for monthly Christian fiction giveaways!
The book is pretty good. What I’ve gotten out of it this week is that Jesus always put His relationships with God and people before other things like money and tasks.
My pastor talked on Sunday about how we can’t really give our lives to anyone because we’re going to die eventually anyway. But we can give time--we give our time to someone else.
Jesus did that. He gave time to God. He gave time to people. (He also gave His life, in a truer sense than we could, but that’s another topic.)
It made me take a good look at my priorities. Often I’ll spend time in my Bible after I handle “pressing emails.” But really, how pressing is something that can be put off for an hour? If it were really pressing, the person would have called me, right?
And God has blessed me abundantly—but how am I using my time in taking care of my work? Am I being as efficient and disciplined as I should be? Am I overworking? Am I being lazy? Am I being inefficient or not working as well as I could?
In my relationship with Jesus, I want to please Him in what He’s given to me. If I don’t make Him a priority, then my goal in anything I do is not for God, it’s for me.
When you boil it all down, questions about priority are questions about faith. If I have faith that God will care for me, it frees me to live with a certain set of priorities; if instead I feel that it’s up to me to take care of myself, my priorities will go in a completely different direction.
How about you? Do you need to reprioritize something in your life?
Camy Tang lives in San Jose, California. She previously worked in biology research, and she is a staff worker for her church youth group. She runs the Story Sensei critique service, and her latest Asian chick lit novel, Single Sashimi, is out now. Join her newsletter YahooGroup for monthly Christian fiction giveaways!
Now that my dd is driving I have more time. The Lord said to spend more time writing. I have to put it on my calendar so I don't forget. I mostly enjoy writing, but there is that pull of other misc. things to do.
Posted by: Helen | February 27, 2009 at 08:29 PM
Helen, you're super busy, too, so it really must be God if He's telling you to write more! Go for it!
Camy
Posted by: Camy Tang | February 27, 2009 at 08:41 PM