The Principle of Priory

Beyond the “first things first” cliché we find a precursor – and all of life for us abounds on its premise.

What is it that sets us apart to this life we individually choose? How can we now settle the affairs of our hearts? And what characterises our day-by-day decisions?

We all have an order of priory—and this came with us into this world of ours. Our task is to find it. A hint: it’s involved inherently within God.

In this principle of priory is the concept of a “house” that we abide to; the house of which is supplementary to our overall belief system—apportioned to God if we’re basically wise. But the house comes before almost anything else, and certainly before our more day-to-day priorities.

Very simply, first comes our priory, and second our priorities—but above both, God.

Specialities of Faith

The Christian faith is so broad we almost cannot get away with not aligning to something (or some things) more than other things.

And the tension that sits with us is not setting ourselves so firmly in this ‘thing’ that we miss the bigger picture of faith, which is to love our God and our fellow human beings, for we so easily miss the point because our priory has become absolute priority—priority, it is, that it should not have.

For recent example, we do not burn Quran’s. Jesus would have none of that. We do not focus solely on the end times. Jesus would have none of that. We do not focus on evangelism as solely important. Again, Jesus would have none of that.

Instead we fix our hearts on love—the activity of love, which is above and beyond all these.

We Do Not Often Understand the ‘Pull’ of Priory

It’s almost as if our priory is beneath the level of our conscious selves; indeed, it has to be. It’s fundamental to the setting of our belief systems, and our value systems are grounded in it.

So, if this sort of pull is a bit of an unknown we’ll so very easily not cater for it and fail (too often) in the discharge of self to the Greatest Commandment, which is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love others as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31).

In this we’re spiritually vapid and this is a great concern, for what sort of witnesses do we actually become? Although we started out with holy resolve, we’ve actually become no different in our ethos and modus operandi than the greater world is; just a skewed version of that which has nothing transformational about it.

We’ve lost our first love here.

Restructuring Our Priory

Re-sorting our “houses” is an important matter.

It’s something we need to continually come back to—giving our hearts and our minds back afresh to God, manifest in our committed discharge to the Golden Rule of Matthew 7:12 (“Do unto others as you would have them do to you”).

We give even more effect to our priory when we place it correctly in the realm of the things of God. It becomes useable for God’s greater purposes. Then, and only then, is our priory given ‘Spiritual gift’ status.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.