Think a minute…I heard a funny, true story about this guy who goes to the gym to exercise several times each week. Each time he takes 15 minutes to change his clothes and get ready. Then he walks around the gym talking with different people. After that he reads the newspaper.

Finally, he does a few stretches and 5-10 minutes of exercises. Then he takes a hot steam bath before going home. So in the entire 2 hours he’s at the gym, he only spends about 10 minutes exercising! One day someone heard this man say: “I don’t understand it.

I go to the gym almost everyday, but I never seem to lose weight.”  Of course, everybody at the gym knows why. They see this guy there doing everything except the main thing:  exercise!

It’s very important that we keep the main thing the main thing. If we want to be successful in our job, business, school, or having a happy family, we must always get the main thing done. We should not spend more time and energy on things that are less important than the main thing. We often get distracted and sidetracked doing other things that might be easier or more fun to do, and we fail to ‘take care of business’ with our main responsibilities and priorities.

For example, a taxi driver’s main thing is to make money by getting passengers. That means he must be working, driving around looking for passengers. But if most of the day he just cleans and polishes his car, then at the end of the day that’s all he’ll have—a clean car with no money! Successful people don’t just stay busy and work hard, they work smart! They put first things first by doing the most important things that will make them a success.

But many people have heaps of money or positions of respect and power. They’re highly educated, healthy, even good-looking, but they’re still unhappy and poor in real wealth. That’s because unless you have this one main thing, your life will be neither successful nor satisfying.

So what is the main thing? It is peace with your Maker. And you can only get it from having a personal relationship with Him where He’s in charge of every area of your life every day.

Only then can you have real peace of mind and success that lasts. But it can start happening right now! All you have to do is ask Jesus to forgive you for living your own way. Then ask Him to help you keep the main thing the main thing:  live His way every day for the rest of your life.  Just Think a Minute…