New Priorities

Something I learned from Jeff….

We all have priorties in our ordered and sometimes mundane worlds. Some are just natural priorities created by nature of the moment. I won’t go into those but we can all imagine what they are. Others are created out of demand, need or by some thing or some one that we are related to. Other priorities yet are set in motion by our professions. But the fact is, we all have priorities.

Jeff’s set of priorities revolved around his faith, his family and his friends. About a year after I got to know Jeff pretty well, we started praying as a group that God would turn the men of our church “on it’s ear”, so to speak. We earnestly prayed one Friday night late into the evening that God would shake up the “sleeping” men of our church and that it might begin with us as a small group. Talk about a huge deal and new priority! We had one.

Over the future months something happened that had to have been a “God thing”. Through that persistant prayer and follow up, one by one, men who were struggling with broken marriages, alcoholism and other addictions and just plain old laziness spritually, came and visited our little group of warriors. And as they saw the genuineness of men like Jeff and heard his “story”, things began to change. As this was happening we felt there would be resistance, therefore we redoubled our prayer effort and prayed for EVERY man of our church that Jeff had on his hit list. And as we prayed we did not hurry it. We prayed by name and specific circumstance. This was just a new priority.

We talked many hours about how we wanted God to transform us into godly men, husbands and fathers. And as it would happen when people earnestly pray, God always responds from His gracious well of mercy.