Priorities
An old saying has it that a demon is at home with demons, and an angel with angels. Another proverb tells us that a man is known by the company he keeps. Taken from A Word in Season: Daily Messages on the Faith for All of Life, Volume 7.
- R. J. Rushdoony,
An old saying has it that a demon is at home with demons, and an angel with angels. Another proverb tells us that a man is known by the company he keeps.
The Book of Proverbs, over and over again, gives us this same counsel from the Lord. It tells us, moreover, that the company we keep is determined by what our heart craves to learn. “He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed” (Prov. 13:20).
Let us apply this to our own lives very specifically. Most of us have time for everything but even the briefest reading of the Bible. We can spend two or three hours daily (the average is actually much higher) watching television, but five minutes to read the Bible is more than we can spare.
We may persuade ourselves that we are too busy or too tired to take time out for a chapter of Scripture, but, while we can easily fool ourselves, God cannot be fooled. Look at it this way: how much respect do you think God will have for you, and for this country, when we have so little respect for Him? If we have trouble giving Him even the leftovers of our lives, time, and money, why expect anything from Him except contempt and judgment?
A companion of fools is a fool. Is our life taken up with foolishness?
We cannot take God lightly: He is the Lord. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He demands more than priorities. He demands our lives, everything that we are and have, for His service, so that we must serve God in whatever is our calling.
We are told to seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33), and this means that our lives must be governed by God’s Word and calling. We are thus not our own, but the Lord’s, whom we must serve with all our heart, mind, and being.
In serving Him alone do we have peace. As St. Augustine saw, in terms of his own experience, “Our hearts are restless, until they rest in Thee, O Lord.” This is our calling, to serve and glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.
The priorities in our lives should come from God and His Word, not from men, nor from us.
Taken from A Word in Season: Daily Messages on the Faith for All of Life, Volume 7.
- R. J. Rushdoony
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony (1916–2001), was a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical law to society. He started the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965. His Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) began the contemporary theonomy movement which posits the validity of Biblical law as God’s standard of obedience for all. He therefore saw God’s law as the basis of the modern Christian response to the cultural decline, one he attributed to the church’s false view of God’s law being opposed to His grace. This broad Christian response he described as “Christian Reconstruction.” He is credited with igniting the modern Christian school and homeschooling movements in the mid to late 20th century. He also traveled extensively lecturing and serving as an expert witness in numerous court cases regarding religious liberty. Many ministry and educational efforts that continue today, took their philosophical and Biblical roots from his lectures and books.