What Do You Value Most?

As I sat on the beach enjoying my time with my book, the soothing sound of the surf was suddenly interrupted by a fight, which broke out five feet from my chair. I looked up to find two very large seagulls fiercely battling. The prize: a small piece of rubber hose left on the beach. I watched, amused as the fight raged on for about 10 minutes. One seagull would grab the piece of hose and try to escape only to be attacked by the other. This invariably resulted in the seagull with the hose dropping it to defend himself only to have it be picked up by the other seagull. This process repeated itself for about ten minutes.

Have you seen people who fight endlessly to possess things that are ultimately of little value? The hose could not feed or clothe the seagulls, yet at that moment, they both had a passion to possess the hose. People often behave like this.

The incident raises a great question each of us needs to answer. What are the things that are most important to us in life? What is it we value the most? Another way to ask this question more personally is, if you could have anything in the world, what would you want? A billion dollars? The spouse of your dreams? The children you desire? A career you enjoyed, or maybe even perhaps a career with a lot of prestige? Pause for a moment and answer this question. No one else is listening, so you can be truly honest with yourself. If you could have anything in the world, what would you want the most?

The way you answer this question is based on what you value. Value is not absolute. What one person values may be different than what another person values. I learned this early on after our daughter was born while I was in graduate school. Since we did not have much money we shopped for her toys at garage sales. The toys, which we acquired very inexpensively, became some of our daughter’s favorite possessions. Clearly she placed a higher value on them than did their sellers.

The real question then is not what other people deem as valuable, but rather what is it that you value. When talking about spiritual growth this question is enormously important because the things you value most in life will most likely be the things you desire most. These things you desire most will also most likely be the things you spend the most amounts of time and energy to achieve.

Unfortunately, the things of this world such as wealth, power, and notoriety create a powerful illusion of value. We regularly see others who have obtained these things, and notice the way others look up to them or want to be like them.  Often, obtaining the things of the world creates a powerful sense of success and resulting worldly approval for their owners. This can create an overwhelming desire within us to obtain these same things. From a worldly standpoint they are valuable. However, from an eternal standpoint they are worth nothing. Worldly things create only a powerful illusion of value that can distort our thinking, and more specifically, our behavior.

In the end, this world has nothing to offer us other than the opportunity to serve Jesus. This is why valuing your spiritual growth is so important. If you value your spiritual growth above all things, you will pursue your spiritual growth above all things and this will guard your heart against worldly desires.