Mixed Priorities Lead to Miserable Results

"if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."2 Chron 7:14 (NIV)

I once heard humility described as putting God first, others second, and yourself last. There is a lot of truth to this. Most problems people have in life stem from mixed priorities. For those struggling with priority, they usually are putting more emphasis on one priority over the others. They tend to spend more time honoring God and missing opportunities to respect others and neglecting themselves. Or they acknowledge God, passionately pursue serving others and "humble" themselves with "me" time.

I heard of people who literally try to divide their days up by percentages in hopes of trying to equally divvy their time. I have tried scheduling my time. The biggest problem that I have with schedules is forgetting to add in time for interruptions. I took a class that told me that the average person spends four minutes trying to re-focus after interruptions. That is most of my day!

Leading our country out of this mess is going to mean a lot of interruptions! If ever our leaders needed to understand humility and how it affects their character and ability to accomplish tasks, then now is the time.

Just imagine trying to balance your own budget without any priorities? If you don't care anything for church or for God, then you would never set aside giving as a priority. If you enjoyed eating out a lot, then you would probably spend a lot of your wealth on over-priced meals while neglecting to fund your retirement. If you like your entertainment and media, then you would neglect setting aside an emergency fund that would help when those "unexpected occasions" arose.

Like Dave Ramsey says, "Who would ever imagine that kids would grow out of their clothes, Christmas comes at the same time every year, that a car will eventually need tires, or that your roof will one day leak."

Our national spending habits reflect this same attitude. We are going to need a Guinness Book sized humble pie in order to swallow this. Spending more money is not going to make the cause of the problem go away - it only deals with the symptoms.

The following is a chart of debt from the Treasury Department since 1979 ($826 Billion) until last year ($10 Trillion).

Date Dollar Amount

09/30/2008 -- $10,024,724,896,912.49

09/30/2000 -- $5,674,178,209,886.86

09/30/1979 -- * $826,519,000,000.00

* Rounded to the nearest millions

In 30 years, we have gone from under a trillion dollars to over $10 trillion! Imagine this - in just five years after World War II, which invested billions of dollars in war spending, our debt was only $250 Billion. A very bad habit of debt spending started after we fully instituted the INCOME TAX! Look at the numbers. (Another argument for the FairTax, but I digress)

If God is trying to tell this country anything, it is how irresponsible we have become with public debt. We dishonor ourselves and we dishonor God, who many credited for allowing them to come to such a great land of opportunity.

For wisdom to once again come into the halls of our nation's capitol, we will need to humble ourselves. But how do we do this?

Humble Ourselves Before God

We need to understand that humility is not about self-deprecation. Humility if learning how to put Christ in the proper place in our hearts.

Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. James 4:9-10 (NIV)

In our pride, we are refusing to turn to God, and this act of foolishness is keeping us down when God wants to lift our nation up (Here are further references: Deuteronomy 30:1-6; Ezekiel 33:11).

God takes no pleasure in the death of sinners. God would much rather us live. But we have to decide as a nation who we will serve, and that starts in every individual household. We cannot and should not legislate religion.

However, we each need to learn how to spend quality time alone with God in prayer in order to give recognition to who He is. This time spent will flow into our lives and eventually impact our communities. We have spent 60 years getting into more debt and more problems, it may take more time and a lot of dedication to see recovery, but do we have any choice?

We need to learn how to respond to God. I am so afraid that we are so numb from our moral decline as a nation that we can longer feel the prick of God in our hearts. Humility re-establishes our ability to hear from God. Corporate revival only happens when individuals respond appropriately to God.

But to what end?

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Phil 2:3-4 (NIV)

Humility will change how we view others and ourselves. With God as the number one priority in a person's life, they are prepared to share His love and communicate kindness yet not neglect correction and teaching for others.

Character is revealed in our humility. We are more likely to to compromise and give in to the moral low roads because they are easily travelled and more convenient. Unfortunately, those roads only lead to short term pleasure or short term solutions. For those in leadership, moral and ethical short cuts run the risk of losing respect of those who follow them, endanger desired outcomes, and spill into the lives of those influenced by them (including staff and family).

Humility prioritizes one's life and opens the door for balanced living. It is this balance that we need in order to help see the restoration of America. Balanced living is the answer for those seeking to see justice and compassion. It will also help us to have compassion for the mistakes of leader's and yet still hold them accountable (making room for change and forgiveness).

One final point, never congratulate yourself for your humility - because it will no longer be! A little humble pie will go a great distance toward the way we think about debt spending. Debt spending is unhealthy and wrong.

"If my people will...humble themselves" How serious are you about seeing true change in our nation? How much would you like to see us reverse our economic downturn? Enough to be humble? What would you like to see from the attitude of our country? Leave a comment.