Posteriorities

I learned a new word this morning. While reading David Jeremiah's Until Christ Returns: Living Faithfully Today While We Wait for Our Glorious Tomorrow, he mentioned having priorities and posteriorities. I wasn't sure the latter was a legitimate word, but the OED substantiated it.

A posteriority is "opposed to a priority," something that comes later in time, or is considered less in importance.

Dr. Jeremiah wrote that the creation of priorities necessitates relegating other things to posteriorities. If you are going to emphasize one set of actions or goals, you must diminish your emphasis on others. It made me pause and think: What am I emphasizing and what I am not emphasizing currently?

I must confess that prior to last August, my priorities were centered around work and my health. I was in my office for 40-60 hours a week, except on days when my body wouldn't cooperate. I didn't have consistent fellowship at a church, was isolated at work, and some days it was all I could do to get to work, teach, and work on my own classes. It's not that I didn't want to make my relationship with God a priority; it's just that I failed miserably.

Thank the LORD that last summer He began to change that. That un-extraordinary Sunday morning in August when He began to work in me through Psalm 37:4 marked a new beginning. Despite the fact that, on my own, I am wholly unable to make my relationship with God my biggest priority, He sparked a hunger that I can't explain and I can't satisfy apart from Him.

I can't boast at all in this, because I know that over the last 15 years, I have tried repeatedly to do hat I thought I was supposed to do. With Paul, I must say that what I want to do, I don't do, and what I don't want to do, I do. It seems that especially when I know what I should do - when I know what I want my priorities to be - I fail even worse than when I'm not particularly trying. So I know that the last 7 months haven't been about me. They've been about God and He's been doing some awesome things.

Christ said that no one comes to the Father but by Him, and that He draws all men to Himself. He has been drawing me to Him, and I am so thankful. He's slowly transforming what had been priorities into posteriorities. I still devote myself with work, but I crave those spiritual things that only He can reveal. In Acts 17:6, the Jews in Thessalonica said that the "men who had turned the whole world upside down have now come here." One of my pastors said that they had it wrong: the world is already upside down, but Christ puts it right side up. St. Augustine of Hippo also proclaimed that the way down is up (or up is down - we always said it wrong while reading his "Confessions" in college!).

I'm seeing God turn my world right side up. He's shifting my priorities, giving me a heart for Him and a strong desire to be a wife and mother and share in His ministry. These are things that I've tried to want on my own and failed. But He's reshaping me, and giving me a better heart. I know I'm still going to fail miserably at times, but how glorious it is to see God moving in your own heart!