The question of "what is most important?” is either a liberating or a painful one.
The question is from the red side of the cycle. This is the side that represents the Son and all the characteristics of a Servant God as manifested in Jesus Christ.
The characteristics of truth, commitment, hands (service), to teach or demonstrate, the ability to maintain an upward focus, live a sacrificially scripture based life, and constantly motivated in striving to achieve at whatever cost, are strong characteristics of the red side.
Obviously Jesus is the ultimate example of all this in action, as he was with the blue and green sides … with Him being the Son of God, God in Man, obviously he has a perfect balance.
As an aside, it is worth looking at the green and blue area's in connection to the red area on display in Jesus' ministry which is simply defined as discipline.
In 2001 I did my first color cycle test with the 3 Colors of Ministry which revealed a green blue starting point. Subsequently, other 3 Colors Tests, have revealed a similar starting point.
The tests revealed a lack of discipline, commitment, motivation, self control and faithfulness. So for me, the question of what is most important, has been a challenge.
Its been a real life saver, particularly in the everyday life, because there is no better place like your own personal life and home to begin to practice and cycle these things. What goes on at home, speaking as a family man, can and will affect your Christian and church experience.
A STAY AT HOME DAD AND JONAH
At present I have a week by week situation where for two or three days a week I am a stay at home dad.
My wife, Tammy, works two or three days a week, sometimes four, at a childcare centre as she has been doing for the last three years.
I have just completed studying and work night shift, but I have moved on from studying to find my head buried in important projects ... life never stops in the Kingdom!
I am not a natural stay at home dad. I have goals and life ambitions like everyone else, as well as vision I believe God has given me for my family.
For Tammy, for my two daughters, where we may end up in the next five or ten years; all that is part of a bigger picture God has given me.
In this case the question of "what is most important?” is extremely vital.
As a green blue, I have a natural tendency to think and feel. Being a perciever has its dangers, procrastination and being easily distracted is a couple.
Like the green blue example of Jonah in The 3 Colors of Ministry, I do size up situations just like Jonah did with his task of preaching message of redemption to the Ninevites. I can count many times when I have thrown something back at God because either I thought it was too impossible, or I just didn't see the point.
As a result, I did let a lot of opportunities slip away.
Jonah was given a severe lesson on what is most important.
In the last passage in the last chapter of Jonah, God sent a worm to eat and kill a nice lush leafy vine shading him while he slept on the shore of a Ninevehian beach, completely spent from fulfilling his task.
After receiving a serious case of sun burn on his scalp, Jonah gets bitterly upset and angry about the vine and the whole Nineveh situation. He wanted God to destroy the wretched city, instead he saved it.
God said to Jonah, "Do you have a right to be angry about the vine?"
"I do," he said. "I am angry enough to die."
But the LORD said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well. Should I not be concerned about that great city." (Jonah 4: 9 – 11)
I believe I have had similar situations in my life where God has done something to deliberately get my attention of the most important. And its usually not surprising when it involves Tammy and my two girls.
THE MOST IMPORTANT IN GOING FOR THE BIG PICTURE
In order to go and achieve the big picture God has laid out for our future, as the leader of the household, as the teacher, as the husband and father, there are a lot of things I have to do to see landmarks are reached and goals are kicked.
I would say our current life situation is not idealistic. I don't always understand why it is like it is sometimes, but I find I am usually asking the "I don't understand" questions when I am losing focus or hope.
My days as they stand, usually involve washing up, washing, vacuuming, mopping floors, drop off and pick my eldest daughter Tullia from school and other things that usually fill up the role of a stay at home mum.
Its actually a role Tammy enjoys but because our life situation involves a mortgage, money has to come from somewhere, we both work.
The only house hold duty I really enjoy is cooking. Hence the love of watching Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver, and pretty much any other cooking show. I can cook savoury dishes really well, but now is not the time to talk about the chocolate cake debacle!
I have to do all that as well as work on the current projects I am involved, including my own musical projects.
So in order to achieve all that soundly, my days are structured in such way to help make stress and anxiety unnecessary.
Being a creative person, I find I can not do anything creative like write a story or an article, write a song, or even sit down and attempt an assignment or work on projects, until I have done all the household duties that need to be done.
Sometimes I have attempted to do that and have gotten so engrossed in what I am doing, that I have run out of time to do the house hold things.
What happens is that tension will fill my body and it will often transfer on to my wife and kids, and before you know it, the day ends in ruins.
Its rare phenomenon in our house these days but going back over two years ago, it was an embarrassingly common problem.
I find if I neglect the household duties and even if I have had a relatively productive day on the creative front, the tension caused by neglecting those duties brings whatever was achieved crashing down. Its marred.
But as I look at our life situation, the big picture and vision God has for us, the life ambitions and goals I would like to achieve and Tammy would like to achieve … for us to get there, oddly enough, the current situation makes a lot of sense.
WHAT YOU SEE IS JUST AS IMPORTANT
It has been my experience when talking to people from a red starting point where they might say, "Forget the big picture, just let the big picture take care of itself.”
However its more often the case the big picture has already been formed. In any life situation, where it is family, church, work, or wherever, the big picture is already there.
Its a bit like saying, "Lets go for a drive and hope a road will appear and form for us, it doesn't matter if we know we were are going or not, God will provide the way."
God will and can provide a way. But isn't is possible God has already provided the way?
If a step is taken in faith towards reaching something one believes can be achieved, God will provide the way, but usually a step in any direction is not taken with out seeing something first.
Western society is a conservative culture by and large, and this sort of thinking has formed a big picture, but when we look deep in to our society, what has become part of the big picture?
Things are done for the sake of doing things and they might not necessarily be the most important things, and often the big picture is ignored.
So while we must ask ourselves the question of what is most important and to focus on the most important things, is it not as important to ask ourselves, what do we see.
And this in itself, is another blog topic on its own.
In my own personal experience, because I start from the question of what do you see? The question of what is most important has become an important ally.