New Year, New Priorities: Steps or Spokes?

You’ve heard the clichés regarding the new year, new priorities, and setting ourselves up for success:

• A new year, a fresh start, and a clean slate.
• A new year, with blank pages waiting to be filled.
• A new year, full of possibilities and opportunities.

Advice flows every January first like champagne at the ritziest new year celebrations. How to be successful. How to make the most of a fresh start. How to apply all the adages regarding time management, establishing priorities, and setting goals. And of course, for Christians, how to put God first above all else. But I, and other Christians I knew, frequently courted failure.

Putting God First, Seasons, and Failures

When I first became a Christian, I was taught a hierarchy of priorities: steps labeled God first, family second, work third, and finally church/ministry. Like many who also grew up with that hierarchy, I spent much of my life consumed with guilt over my failure to consistently honor that order.

Seasons of life bring a variety of challenges. A simultaneous relocation and job change can require an all-consuming focus. A new mom with a colicky baby may be desperate for a 5-minute shower, never mind setting aside a daily 30-minute quiet time to read her Bible. And the result is often a feeling of failure at not putting God first.

Spokes, Not Steps

But what if a hierarchy of steps is not what God expects of us?

What if putting God first is less about a schedule and more about identity that flows from relationship? What if, instead of counting minutes, we practiced an awareness of the Holy Spirit’s presence in every minute, regardless of what we’re doing?

That’s not to say we give up daily quiet time. Every relationship, and especially our relationship with the Lord, will suffer without a consistent investment of time to cultivate continued intimacy. But life can bring situations, demands, and crises that require temporary flexibility.

The solution lies in spokes, not steps. Picture a bicycle wheel. The spokes of the wheel (our priorities, roles, and activities) anchor the tire (our ability to travel through life) to the hub (our relationship with the Lord). So you and I can always put God first, regardless of what we are doing, because we are anchored, equipped, and strengthened by the Holy Spirit every minute of every day.

As we enter yet another new year, let’s think spokes, not steps as we prioritize and honor the Lord in all we do!

And with that encouragement, as we leave 2025 behind and enter 2026, I leave you with this prayer challenge from the late missionary Jim Elliot:

“I pray that the Lord might crown this year with His goodness
and in the coming one give you a hallowed dare-devil spirit
in lifting the biting sword of Truth, consuming you with a passion
that is called by the cultured citizen of Christendom ‘fanaticism’, but
known to God as that saintly madness that led His Son through
bloody sweat and hot tears to agony on a rude Cross—and Glory!”