Prioritize your relationship with God

Admission to certain social clubs depends on your family of origin: blue blood or blue collar. Sadly some employers and some churches do that too. But God doesn’t. Imagine you were Joseph. You share a father with your siblings, but four different mothers have given birth along the way. You dad’s a con artist. He has been one his entire life, and everyone knows it. The whole community knows he cheated your uncle out of the estate and then hid behind his mother’s skirts before running off like a coward to avoid being killed. Your great-uncle tricks your dad into marrying your mother’s sister, perhaps by getting your dad so drunk during the wedding feast that he didn’t know which sister he married. So he ended up marrying the plain one instead of the pretty one. But that didn’t faze him, he just married both of them! The one he really loved couldn’t have kids, so he slept with the nanny. He enjoyed it so much he started sleeping with most of the kitchen help too. No wonder you always thought that your brothers looked like the cooks! But big doors swing on little hinges, and Joseph’s life is described in one verse: “The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man.” Successful in spite of family dysfunction and betrayal. Successful in spite of slander and thirteen years of false imprisonment. And with God on your side, you can overcome your beginnings and succeed too. That’s why the most important thing you can do is to build, maintain, and prioritize your relationship with God.