The Power of Kingdom Priorities

New Year’s Message

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

January 5, 2025

The Power of Kingdom Priorities

²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷ And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? ²⁸ And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹ yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. ³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble Matt. 6:25-34

Pray

Five years ago today, I shared a message titled Are We Ready for God to Do Something New in the New Year? That was January of 2020 and we all know the new and unexpected thing that happened with Covid that year. 2020 was hard on the church, with attendance dropping off and many churches never recovering. But I don’t believe Covid weakened the church as much as it revealed the weakness already there.

I could be wrong, but I don’t feel like 2025 is going to be like that. I feel like God is going to do good things that look more like good things in 2025. And I want us to pray and work and pray some more that we’re a part of those great things we sang about earlier.

Jesus is giving what we call the Sermon on the Mount and as he winds down the message, he encourages us not to worry. Don’t be anxious. He uses three universal needs, food, drink, clothing, but he’s not only thinking about these things. He says do not be anxious about your life. There are countless things in our lives that we can worry over.

Worry is a lot like a whack-a-mole. Knock one worry down and another pops right up. We worry about something and lose sleep over it, then it works out and we breath a sigh of relief…then something else to worry about pops up. Some people play whack-a-worry their whole lives!

Jesus says don’t be anxious about your life. Life can have a large range of worry: how will we pay the bills? What if I lose my job? Health problems. We worry about the future. We worry about the past.

We worry about our kids. Will they be ok? How will they turn out? Will they be safe? As I was working

on this we were preparing to say goodbye to Matt as he returns to very tough, physically demanding infantry training. I admit my heart was worrying. The last night before we drove him to the airport left I tossed and turned for hours in the middle of the night.

Anxiety about our life can feel like whack-a-worry!

Jesus addresses anxiety to his disciples by assuring us that our heavenly Father will take care of us and that we are of much value to Him (which means He loves us). But then Jesus takes an unexpected turn and speaks to our priorities.

Goes from worry about food, drink, and clothing to seeking food and drink and clothing. The Gentiles make these their priority. That’s what the word “seek” means – they are chasing after these things as if they are what life is made of. But life is more than food or drink. It’s more than making money or climbing the company ladder or impressing people.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. If we don’t make chasing what we need our highest priority, God will add what we need to our lives. Holy mathematics. We prioritize God’s kingdom and God adds all these other things we need to our lives.

There is a good challenge I feel the Lord putting before us and it’s, let’s recommit to putting the kingdom of God first in our lives in 2025. Maybe you’re already doing that, but I know I have room to grow. I need this message probably more than anyone.But by recommitting to seeking the kingdom of God first, what do we have to lose but our worries and fears? God can add to our lives better than we can. God can give you more in an hour than you could after years of getting up early and working late trying to get ahead. You can work on the house, but unless the Lord is building it too, it’s all in vain.

The great news is, when the Lord builds with us, when the Lord is working with us, when the Lord is standing watch with us, it’s never in vain! The house will stand, the job will succeed, the ones we entrust to Him will be safe in His care.

2025 is a good year to realign our priorities with God’s priorities.

1. Live every day aware of your inability and God’s ability in you

As the people sitting on that hill heard Jesus teach about the kingdom of God, they must have thought, “I could never do this!”

• If you want to enter the kingdom be more righteous than the Pharisees, the most righteous people they knew.
• The law said don’t kill. Jesus said don’t even be angry with them.
• The law said don’t commit adultery. Jesus said if you even look on a woman with lust you’ve committed adultery with her in your heart.
• The law said love your neighbor and hate your enemy – Jesus says love your enemy too. Then he throws in this advice: be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

We can’t do this…not in our own power. We need the grace of God to empower us to live differently and the forgiveness of God when we fall short.

The good news is that God loves to give us what we need when we ask in faith. Jesus said in Luke 12:32 “Fear not, little flock, for it isyour Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”~ Luke 12:32 It is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom and to give us His Son’s righteousness.

We can’t do the sermon on the mount in our strength but we can by the power of the Holy Spirit. Live every day aware of your inability and God’s ability in you.

2. Live every day seeking to make God number one in your life

The thing about priorities is they reveal who and what we love. Making God number one means making Him the first love of our life. God says we will find Him when we seek Him with all our heart! God’s not interested in half-hearted seeking. God’s won’t settle

for being in the top ten of our loves.

The greatest commandment is: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength. Love Him with all our heart and seek Him with all our heart. Putting God and His purposes first over everything else, not because we have to, because we love Him.

We can’t see God but we sure can learn to love Him! Peter writes

⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy…1 Pet. 1:8

How do we make God number one? Be committed to do the simple things He has commanded us to do. We need to stop making excuses, and start making time to do the basics:

• Make time to read the Bible every day not just as a hearer but as a doer of the word!
• Make time every day to pray believing that God still answers prayers!
• Be committed to a local church, not only attending, but involved in loving and serving! I guarantee you we have no chance of doing this individually if we aren’t encouraging and provoking one another to do it as a church family! God never meant us to – His plan for reaching the world and carrying out His purposes run right through the local church!
• Make time to share our faith with unbelievers. The more we love God, the more we know He is the greatest thing that ever happened to us, the more we want to share Him with others.
• Aren’t we ready to see God do great things? Don’t we want to see people set free from addictions and depression and suicidal thoughts? Don’t we want to see the lost get saved? Don’t we want to see people find their calling and purpose for the kingdom? Don’t we want to see God heal broken relationships, strengthen weak marriages, save our children and set them apart for His glory? I want to see these things but not from the bleachers like we watch a football game. I want us Grace Community Church to be a part of that in 2025 in a bolder, bigger way than we’ve been.

Seeking God’s kingdom means making Him our first love! This is the starting place for getting everything else in our lives right. Have you ever started buttoning your shirt but gotten the bottom button wrong then every other button is out of order? That’s how it is with our priorities. If we get the first one wrong, all the others will be out of order too.

If our lives are out of order we need to check who or what we love the most. God doesn’t settle for second place – Jesus said if we love husband, wife, son, daughter, mother, or father more than him we’re not worthy of him.So if you want to love your wife more, love God more than her. If you want to love your kids more, love God more than them.

When our kids were young, Janice and I would tell them before we left them with family or close friends so we could go to a Christian conference, “mommy and daddy are going to this conference to learn how to be a better mom and dad.” We knew investing in our walk with the Lord and in our marriage was the best thing we could do for our kids. Priorities – when we focus so much on our kids that we neglect our marriage, we’re headed for trouble and not doing right by our kids. What young kids want most is a mom and dad who love each other. It brings security to them.

Loving God first never shortchanges our love for others. Just the opposite, the more we love God, the bigger our capacity to love others gets. That’s why the second greatest commandment is to love your neighbor as yourself. Loving God doesn’t reduce our love for people - when we love God most, we will love people more.

Seeking the kingdom first always means loving people and wanting them to come into the kingdom and grow as Christians. Love for God never logjams our love for people. John writes that if we don’t love people who we can see, how can we love God, who we can’t see?