True spiritual priority
Matthew 16:26 “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
How much of a priority is your faith life?
You might consider that to be almost an insulting question, but stop and consider this for a moment: It has been said that your priorities can be seen by where you spend your time and your money. Take that standard and go back and reconsider the opening question. I’m not so much talking about the money part right now, but think about the time you give your faith life. Is it 1 hour a week in worship? Is it not even that? Does the busyness of your life intrude into the priority your faith life gets with the idea that you can give God more time down the road?
Our Bible verse for this week squarely addresses our priorities with our money from a spiritual perspective. Do some real soul-searching and ask yourself how often you are tempted or perhaps even fall to the temptation “to gain the whole world”? Very often this comes in the form of “keeping up with the Joneses”. There is no denying that it is a very real and difficult temptation to want to have what everyone else has. The statistics of American’s use of credit and amount of debt are frightening.
We may have all sorts of rationale and reasons, but each one of us needs to seriously consider Jesus’ 2nd question in our verse “What can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”. That question is a real gut check. It’s not just “Do I make foolish decisions with my money?” or “Have I fallen into the trap of trying to keep up with everyone else in the world?”.
The real question is this “Have I or am I tempted to mortgage my soul to look good in the eyes of those around me or to make myself temporarily feel good? That is really frightening when you look at it that way that we might actually be putting our soul and our place in heaven in eternal jeopardy.
Let’s go back and ask the question which we began our devotion with – How much of a priority is your faith life? I’d like you to look at that from another perspective. Our faith life is not something we live for God. Yes, our faith life is to give God first place in our lives and also give glory to him, but ultimately the purpose of our faith life to is strengthen our faith, keep us connected to Jesus and get us through this life to the eternal glories of heaven.
I humbly ask you to seriously consider all the things laid out in this devotion, evaluate your spiritual life in a realistic light and work to make sure that you have not mortgaged your soul for temporary earthly pleasure or glory.