What are your first five life priorities?  What or who do you put first in your life?  Matthew 22:36-40 says that we are to put God first, but some days it’s ourselves and other days it’s our children and still others it’s our work place.  Does God get your leftovers at times?  At a certain point in our marriage, Mary and I realized that both God and our spouse couldn’t keep receiving our leftovers at the end of the day.  But where do we place our spouse and our self within the first five priorities of life?

Matthew 22 says to love God first.  Okay, got that.  Then, you are to love your neighbor as yourself.  Who is our closest neighbor?  Next to God is family and the closest relationship within family is your spouse.  Where then does self fit into this list of priorities?  There is no denying that our needs are important to us.  There is no denying that we like our teeth brushed and our hair combed, looking as good as we can before facing our day.  And there is no denying that in order to love others as our self, we need to have an appropriate self-love.   It is our conclusion that we need to place the priority of loving self after loving our spouse, but at the same priority level.   …”He who loves his wife loves himself.”  (Eph. 5: 28b)

We’ll continue our look at priorities next week.