A Simple Test

Last night at Youth Group we did a simple test to check our priorities and see what is important to us.  We were talking about the process of refining and how as Christians Christ refines our lives and aims to remove the impurities.  Regardless of your value system a process of evaluation and refining your priorities is extremely powerful and helpful.  It was helpful to me and really eye opening.  Give this a try.  It won't take long and may help you re-center your focus and priorities.  It will definitely help you to see what is important in your life.  After the test, I have a simple question for you to consider (For maximum effectiveness don't skip ahead and answer the question until you have completed the 3 tasks in the test.)

Task #1
-On a sheet of paper write down different parts of your life that you consider important and valuable.  Think closely about the different things you do each day/week and the relationships that are important to you.  Think about hobbies and interests.  Try to get 16-20 different things written down.  Here is my sample list:


Teacher
Coach
Follower of Jesus Christ
Husband
Basketball Coach
Sports Fan
Father
Soccer Coach
Youth Leader
Son
Brother
Facebook/Twitter
Reading
Working Out/Exercising
Traveling
Blogging


Now go through and cross off the one item that is least important to you and circle the item that is most important to you.  Continue to do this until everything is either crossed off of circled.  You may have some tough choices near the "middle of the list."  This process of elimination and selection should provide you with 7-10 of the most important things in your life.  What observations about your new list have you made?  For me I noticed that people and relationships remained while activities were eliminated.

Task #2

Look at your "half list" of most important values and items from your life and rank them in order from most to least important.


Task #3

Write down every value/item/relationship from your list that you wouldn't give up for $1,000,000.  You may have more or less items from your "half-list."  For example:  I wouldn't trade my Wife for $1,000,000.  Same thing for my faith, kids or parents. So they go on the list.  However, for $1,000,000 I would gladly give up Facebook and Twitter, so they are left off this list.  Traveling, Reading and Exercising are much closer calls for me personally.  I probably wouldn't trade those items out of my life for $1,000,000.

Take a look at those lists again and then scroll down and answer the question below:













Is how you spend your time in proportion to how valuable you consider each part of your life?