Priorities – they’re a funny thing. We know we should prioritise our lives better – our time, our money, our focus. We should spend them on the things that really matter. But somehow, all too often, we end up squandering them on ridiculous things.

How often have you dreamed of winning the lottery? Just imagine millions … wouldn’t that make you happy? Actually, the research tells us quite the opposite.

Roy Kaplan of the Florida Institute of Technology tracked more than a thousand lottery winners over a ten-year period. That’s a pretty serious study and the results are disturbing. Very few of them experienced any lasting happiness as a result of their win. Many of their marriages had ended in divorce and a good many of them had squandered their fortune.

So why is it then, that we spend so much time and effort chasing financial outcomes at the expense of family, relationships, spiritual fulfilment – the things that, if you poked around inside people’s hearts, are the things that truly matter?

I wonder what we’d find if we all just stopped and compared our real priorities against the ones reflected in what we do day after day. Jesus put it like this:

Matthew 16:25,26 Any of you who try to save the life you have will lose it. But you who give up your life for me will find true life. It is worth nothing for you to have the whole world if you yourself are lost. You could never pay enough to buy back your life.

If your priority in your heart of hearts is following Jesus, let me ask you today, kindly but firmly, does your lifestyle, the way you spend your time and money, the way you treat other people, the decisions you make – does all of that reflect your true priority? Well, does it?

That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.