Victoria Osteen - Put God First In Your Life
Thank you, Lord. We are a grateful people, amen? You may be seated. I just want to encourage us all, at the first of this year, to not allow busyness to consume our lives, too not allow just the busyness of life to overwhelm us and overtake us. We all have a million things to do. There's our jobs, our families. We have responsibilities of all kinds, we have chores to do, plenty of activities that can keep us busy, but I want to encourage us, to not be busy, but be productive.
You see, if we're going to see our dreams and desires come to pass for this year, those things that we're expecting, we're going to have to make room for them. We're going to have to clear out some of the clutter and set some priorities. You see, if you want a healthy, strong family this year, if that's the desire of your heart, you're going to have to move some things around. You're going to have to give your family the first and best of your time, not your leftovers. Maybe you're learning a new career, getting ready for a promotion. You can't stay out with your friends all night and expect to get to work the next day and perform at your top ability. Your desire is to get out of debt this year. "This is the year I'm getting out of debt. I can feel it, I can sense it". You can't go and spend everything that you see. You can't buy everything that you see. You can't be spending your money: you've got to learn how to save it. You got to set some priorities.
You see, if we're going to see our dreams and desires come to pass. We can't just let everything occupy our time and get us off course. You know, at one point in my life, I thought that multi-tasking was a gift, and I had it in abundance. I could juggle all these balls in the air. In fact, sometimes I would look at Joel and think, "Look at me. Look how much I can do". Now, you know, women we do have a little more tendency than men to wear a lot of hats. We try to do it all. So women, we can somehow fall in this a little bit more than men. But I realized one day, that my multi-tasking was not productive. What it was doing was burning my energy. I was working on one thing, thinking about two other things. It was causing me to have a hurry spirit. See, I had to hurry and do this, so I could hurry and do that. The people around me had to hurry because I have to hurry. You know, that brings stress into our life. That is not productive.
You see, so often we think that activity equals productivity, and it doesn't. Activity sometimes just means busy, just busy, and we don't want to wear busyness as an important attribute in our life. We want to wear fruitfulness, productiveness. We want our life to represent the good things of God. We want our life to be in a place of priority, getting the right things done at the right time. I want to encourage us, let's don't put the lesser things in and leave out the more important things. It says in Psalms 90:12, "Teach us to number our days, so that we can gain a heart of wisdom". That Psalm was a prayer of Moses, and I can only hear the cry of his heart, "God teach me, teach me and show me how to order and prioritize my day".
Moses was the man who was in charge of all the Israelites. He brought them out of captivity and was God's man leading them into the Promised Land. Can you imagine the great responsibility on Moses's life? They said it was over 600.000 men, that's not including all the women and children that he was responsible for. All eyes were on Moses. He had to have all the answers. He had to know how to get to the right places. He had to be the one to hear from God for them. I'm sure some of you feel a little bit like Moses. Everybody's asking you things. You need to fix all their problems. You need to pray for them. You need to bring in the money. You need to do it all. You feel overwhelmed. You see, you need to pray the same prayer Moses did, "God, teach me to order my day. Teach me to put the right things into prospective. Not to put the lesser things first, but the what matters first".
You know, there was an account of Moses and he was trying to settle all the disputes among the people. He would sit day in and day out, listening to their arguments, listening to the things that were going wrong in their life. He was trying to give them the right answers, trying to settle disputes among them, day in and day out. One day, God sent his father-in-law, Jethro, and Jethro observed what was happening, that Moses was just wearing himself out, sitting among the people, trying to resolve all the problems and do everything else he was supposed to do, and Jethro spoke into his life and said, "You need to set up a system. You need to appoint your godly, God-fearing men, put them over the tribes. Begin to set up a system that you could meet the needs of the people. Don't wear yourself out doing the thing that other people can do. You need to do what only you can do. You need to set your priorities".
I truly believe that was an answer to Moses's prayer. He sent a wise counsel to him, to help him gain the right prospective, to help him clear some of the clutter and rearrange his life. You see, God wants to help us. He's got people out there to help you. He's got ideas to make your life easier. We've got to pray, "God, help us". It's about ordering our life, so that we can see our God callings come into existence, come into full fruition. We want to be all that God has called us to be. My question today is, are you putting the big rocks in first? See, the big rocks represent the important things, the things that are going to move you forward, the things that are going to satisfy you and bring forth these God-callings out in your life and in the lives of those you love.
You see, there was a professor, and he stood up in front of his students and he held up a glass jar, a see-through jar, and he put three big rocks in it. The rocks filled the top of the glass and he asked his students, "Is the jar full"? To them, it looked full. They were to the top of the container, and then he grabbed some gravel and he began to put it in the jar, and shake the jar and the gravel began to work its way down. He asked his students, "Is the jar full"? Then he got some sand and he begin to pour the sand in, and the sand started filling in all the other empty spaces. You see, his illustration and example was to show his student a lesson in productivity. He was showing them that, "If you will put the big rocks in first, all the little things will make its way around them, but if you put the gravel, the sand and all this stuff in first, you're not going to have room for the big rocks".
You see, my question is, what rocks are we putting in first? The big rocks are the important rocks. We have to put the big rocks in our container of life first, if they're going to get done, and one of the major, big rocks, that would benefit all of us, would be spending time with God. You see our God-rock should be the first rock that we put in our container of life. The scripture says in Proverbs 3, "That if you will acknowledge God, first place in everything that you do, that he will direct your path and he will crown your efforts with success". You see, it's so easy in the morning to pull our phones off of the charger and begin to look at our text messages, our emails, check out social media, and before we know it, time has gotten away from us. So we have to put that God-rock aside for a later time.
But see, if you want God to direct your path, if you want him to crown your efforts with success, he says, "Put me first". Nobody wants to move in the wrong direction. Nobody wants to waste their time hanging around the wrong people. No one wants to do the things that aren't important. We all want to be productive. We want to reach the fullness of our destiny. So my encouragement today is, let's all make a decision to put the God-rock first in our jar of life and then all the other things will begin to make their way down. Put that God-rock in and God will help you identify the other big rocks, then all the other things can make their way down into your jar of life, amen? Amen. He's an awesome God.