Imagine an empty jar. If I were to fill it with stones, would you say it was full? If I were to then pour gravel into the jar, I could fill it further. If I then poured sand into the jar, I could still fill it even more and, if I were to add water, I could then fill it further still.

However, if I were to fill the same jar first with water and then sand, etc., I would not be able to fit in the jar what was in it before.

The point of this illustration is to show that we need to figure out what the stones in our own lives represent. What are the most important things in our lives and in our faith? What should we focus on and put first above all else?

What might some of those stones be in our faith?

The major theologians of Church history would all say that God’s Word, the Bible, is one of the most important things. It should be something that drives our everyday lives, something that we come to daily in some way; that we might live more like Jesus and love the people around us more and more. If we don’t know what God says, we cannot do what he asks us to do.

Some people say, “I wish God would speak to me”, but fail to realise that he speaks through his Word. If we are familiar with it and know what it says, a lot of the difficulty and decision making of life can be navigated, as his Word lights our path ahead (Psalm 119:105). It will not remove these difficulties, but it will show us a way to go with Christ’s help (John 16:33).

Is the Word of God a priority in your life? Do you need to rearrange some things in the jar of your heart to make sure that it comes before others?

God’s Word says in Deuteronomy 8:3 that we should not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. If we loved God’s Word even more than the essential things in our lives, how much more we would be able to live like his Son and reflect him in the world, as we love others as he did.