In making decisions, the most important thing will always be at the top of one’s priorities.

For instance, if a young man or woman has a vision of becoming a great athlete, they begin training and developing the fundamental skills needed.  They will forfeit other things in their pursuit of their goal.  They learn to avoid giving in to the desires of their flesh that would prevent them from achieving their goal.  They have deemed this goal to be more important to them than certain other pleasures.

The same becomes true when a person chooses a career path that requires additional education or training.  They set aside the things that would interfere with the time and financial resources needed to pursue their goal because they have given it a higher priority in their life.

Even in the world, these types of decisions are admired and honored.  Many who look on and cheer for them do not know the battles each one had to fight within themselves to reach their goal.  If the goal isn’t given a high enough priority, they will be unable to sustain the effort to reach it, even with others cheering them on.

Some things require being given proper priority to be given the time, energy, and resources they require to see come to fruition.  Priority is often determined by value.  The things we give time, energy, and resources to are the things we have ascribed value to.

This is also true when it comes to our spiritual lives.  It is the job of the Holy Spirit to bring us into sanctification in our bodies, which are the temple of the Lord.  It is the will of God that we have priorities in this area because of the value we place on His temple.  As an apostle of Jesus Christ, Paul wrote about this.

1Thessalonians 4:3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality; 4 that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor, 5 not in passion of lust, like the Gentiles who do not know God; 6 that no one should take advantage of and defraud his brother in this matter, because the Lord is the avenger of all such, as we also forewarned you and testified. 7 For God did not call us to uncleanness, but in holiness.

The value is possessing the vessel that is the temple of the Holy Spirit in sanctification and honor.  This establishes a priority of disciplining the flesh according to the will of God.  Not giving in to the flesh for it to seek after pleasures however it may desire.  In this matter, for a believer in Jesus, the importance of the will of God must be given a much higher priority than self-gratification if possessing one’s vessel in sanctification and honor is to be realized.

What we determine to be of greatest importance will always merit our time, energy, and resources to pursue.  In the New Covenant, where we no longer perform to earn or merit righteousness and acceptance, there is still significance to knowing there are some things more important than others.  Our spiritual justification is taken care of in Christ, but God still cares as well about our bodies because they are His temple.  The temple of the Holy Spirit is something more important than all the things the flesh might otherwise desire.  We have been called to holiness in Christ.  I encourage you to consider the importance of possessing your vessel in sanctification and honor.