Wrong priorities are great dangers for Christians. When you are a sinner, you basically choose between two opinions: good and evil.  As you grow in the Lord, your options increase and you begin to have more to choose from.

This time your choices are not between good and evil but between good and good.  In terms of what to do, there are often several good things to choose from. When you get to that point it is important that you understand the concept of priorities: “Which one do I do first?” Jesus gave us a great revelation on some things that should be done before others.

It is interesting to study how many things Jesus said should be done first.  Whenever Jesus spoke of the first or the foremost issue, He used the Greek word proton. In this book, we take a look at the protonissues; things that Jesus said should be done first.

As a Christian, you must do first things first.  First things first means first in time, order, number, rank and value.

A Christian must do the most important things first.

Why Must Certain Things Be Done First?

1. Anything that is not done first seems to lose its significance.

God is very patient with us.  Many have disobeyed Him and seem to have gotten away with it. The importance of the Word of God seems to fade as we carry on in disobedience.  Very soon that which is more important than anything else becomes despised and irrelevant.

Today, I minister under the anointing and many respect me for the ministry.  But if I had not obeyed God when I did, I may have lived out my life normally as a medical doctor. Discussions about the call of God would have seemed insignificant and irrelevant.

Sitting amongst my medical colleagues in various hospitals, the thought of being a pastor would have sounded ridiculous.  I would have said to my friends, “Let me tell you about a silly idea I once had. Did you know that I once wanted to be a pastor? When we were younger, we were over- spiritual and impractical.”

Have you never met grown-ups who said they were originally lined up for priesthood? In their old age they try to compensate for their disobedience through their children.

I know a man who tried to force one of his children to become a priest.

He said to his son, “God called me to be a priest but I didn’t do it.  You become that priest and I will give you property and money so that you lack nothing.” At the end of their lives they desperately want to compensate for a life of non-compliance and non-cooperation with God.

Dear friend, I can assure you that the longer you walk in your own ways the more distant and unrealistic the commands of God will seem. There is a reason for proton.

Proton, doing first things first, saves you from deception.  God will take care of you and be with you as you flow in His will.

2. Anything that is not done first may never be done.

Delay often means cancellation.  Anything that is not done first may never be done. I never knew that delaying something could actually lead to its cancellation.

There was a day I had to make a trip from London to New York to minister.  I was actually scheduled to minister in Maryland that night. Unfortunately, I had a very early flight from Heathrow Airport in London, to Amsterdam and then I was to connect from Amsterdam to New York.  Somehow I did not believe the time I saw on my ticket. I thought it was too early to be true.

When I got to the airport, for the first time in my life, I was too late to check-in or to board the aircraft.  I had missed the check in time by about twenty minutes. I was disappointed.  I had to wait for the next flight to Amsterdam!

“You cannot make your first connection to New York but you can get a later flight,” they told me. I realized from the time, that I would still make it to New York and just in time to drive to Maryland.  So I called New York and told the pastor when I would be arriving and told him that we would need to drive rapidly to Maryland.  I assured him that we were in good time and that the programme would surely come on in spite of the slight delay.

In Amsterdam, I confidently boarded my connecting flight to New York knowing that it would soon take off and I would be on my way.  After a while, I looked out of the window and I saw people spraying the wings of the plane.  Then came the announcement: “There is so much ice on the engine that it will not be safe to take off.  It will take us one hour to get rid of it. Please bear with us.”

I did another calculation and I still felt I could just make it to Maryland for the programme.  The whole church would be waiting for me. They had been expecting me for weeks.  Unfortunately, it was not to be so.

After the ice problem was solved, a new one arose, introducing even further delays. This time they said the toilets in the plane were not working and they had to fix them.  I had never heard of toilets in a plane not working but it was happening live!  It took another two hours before we were finally ready for take-off.

I sat in anguish as the minutes went by, imagining how many people would have gathered for the programme.  Eventually, I had to accept that the programme would be cancelled because I would not make it in time.  As I sat in my chair, I reflected over how the twenty-minute delay in London had cancelled my entire programme.

It was then that the Lord spoke to me: “Do you see that delay can mean cancellation?”

The Lord showed me that the delay in obeying His Word could lead to my never doing His will! The Lord showed me that He had allowed me to have this experience so that I would learn how the delay in doing His will sometimes leads to my never doing it.

Many who intend to obey God will never end up obeying Him because they put the wrong things first.  Their marriage, their PhDs, their MBAs, and their five-year trip abroad, all come before obedience to the Lord.  Obedience to God, which they put in second place never materialized.

I have watched with sadness as people who should have been full-time in the ministry postpone it till after they accomplished certain things. Unfortunately that delay permanently closed the opportunity for them to be in full-time ministry.  What people don’t realize is that with time, circumstances change so much that the will of God does not seem realistic any more.

Delay often means cancellation but many do not know this fact.  Has God spoken to you?  What has He asked you to do?  Maybe obeying God is not protonfor you.  Perhaps a thousand different things come before your obedience to the Lord.

3. It is an insult to give the second place to that which should be first.

Many do not realize that it is insulting to make God your second or third option.

One day while I was preaching, I identified several young ladies who did not have husbands.

I suggested to them to get married to a nice young man in church. They all refused.

“Why don’t you want to marry him, is he not a handsome man?”

“Yes he is,” they answered.

“Is he a spiritual person?”

“Yes he is.  He is even a pastor.”

“Does he not have a car and a house?”

“Yes he does.  Actually his car is very nice.”

“Then why don’t any of you want to marry him?”

“Because he has a wife already,” they answered.

I continued, “But you can be his second wife?”

In chorus they all cried out, “No way, no sir, we will not be second wives, we want to be number one.”

They felt insulted that I would offer them the second position.  They wanted to be wives but not second wives.  These young ladies wanted to be wives but only if they would be the first and only wives.  This is how God feels.  He knows we will serve Him but He wants us to serve Him first.  It is actually an insult to put God after anything! Unfortunately, God is constantly relegated to the second, third and sometimes tenth place of importance.  It is time for God to take His proton (foremost) position in your life.

4. Problems abound when that which is to be first becomes second.

When something that is supposed to be done second is done first, many things go wrong.  I was recently in one African country and my host took me to a cemetery.  I was amazed at the fresh graves that were gradually filling every space.  At a dinner, with another pastor friend, he gave me an incredible account of the number of funerals that he was conducting in his city.  He told us that they had so many funerals that pastors no longer conducted funeral services.  The funerals were so numerous that cell leaders had to conduct burial services of church members.

I listened in amazement.  He went on to describe how they no longer buried people lying down because there was no space in the cemetery.  He described how they buried them vertically, standing up!  The coffins were actually placed vertically into the ground to save space.  In other words, the dead bodies would stand, rather than lie down.  I thought to myself, “In such a situation do you say, ‘stand in peace,’ or ‘rest in peace’?”

What was the cause of this unprecedented wave of death in this country? Why were so many people dying?

The answer was simple: the second thing had come before the first thing.  Sex had come before marriage.  Sex is supposed to be experienced only after marriage.  In this country, sex was an experience occurring largely outside the context of marriage.  A wave of death had swept through that nation because the first thing had become the second and the second thing first.

by Dag Heward-Mills

by the best selling African author Dag Heward-Mills