What’s important to you?

What's important to you?  Do we even take time to think about that question?  Or are we just so focused on "now" that we don't even know what's important? 

Maybe I should say, what's important in your future?  You know, beyond the next few minutes? 

Even better, your distant future?  Where do you hope to be at the end of your life? 

In other words, what's your life goal?  What's important for you to be able to achieve your life goal? 

Do I dare even ask if you've thought about the next life?  What happens after this one?

What's important to you?

Since this site's about Christianity, let me ask you.  Is Christianity important to you?  No matter your religion, is God important to you?  

Lot's of things have changed since Biblical times.  I've even got a series on what's changed in the last ten years, and how those changes are taking us away from God.  But let's actually go back to Biblical times.  Look at something that's changed, big time, since then.

The excerpt below is from a Dallas Willard book, titled The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God. 

What Jesus’ Words Mean

The life and words that Jesus brought into the world came in the form of information and reality. He and his early associates overwhelmed the ancient world because they brought into it a stream of life at its deepest, along with the best information possible on the most important matters. These were matters with which the human mind had already been seriously struggling for a millennium or more without much success. The early message was, accordingly, not experienced as something its hearers had to believe or do because otherwise something bad—something with no essential connection with real life—would happen to them. The people initially impacted by that message generally concluded that they would be fools to disregard it. That was the basis of their conversion.¹From Copyright © 1997 by Dallas Willard. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.

Are Jesus' words important?

Notice how Dallas Willard begins:

He (Jesus) and his early associates overwhelmed the ancient world because they brought into it a stream of life at its deepest, along with the best information possible on the most important matters.

Do we still look at Christianity as a stream of life at its deepest?  Do we view Christianity as the best information possible on the most important matters?  I'm not even talking about the best information possible.  I'm asking, when we think about what's important to us, do we even consider Christianity?  Is it even in our list of important things, let alone at the top?

Actually, the best information possible is the words of Jesus.  And look how people responded to Jesus when He spoke.

The Wise and Foolish Builders - Matthew

7:24-27 pp — Lk 6:47-49

Mt 7:24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”

Mt 7:28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

Did you catch how that passage ended?

Mt 7:28 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, 29 because he taught as one who had authority, and not as their teachers of the law.

Again, one who had authority.

Maybe you're thinking, of course Jesus spoke with authority.  He's Jesus!  What about someone else?  How about this next passage?

The Holy Spirit Comes at Pentecost

Ac 2:1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.