Eternal Priorities: Aligning Our Lives with God’s PurposeAir Date: May. 20, 2025

Beth Barlet (00:00)
We live in a fast-paced world where the urgent often overshadows the important. But what if we took a step back? What if we considered how our priorities today could influence our legacy tomorrow? Today I dive into what it means to intentionally prioritize eternity in our hearts. Let’s get to it. Salty Begins right now.

Beth Barlet (00:44)
Welcome to Salted, where I help you uncover the transformative power to know and love Jesus in His fullness and stir up revival within your heart. Join me, Beth Barlett, as I come alongside you every week on the narrow path that draws us into a deeper relationship with Jesus. Get ready to be encouraged, empowered, ignited and equipped as we pursue authentic discipleship to influence the world for the Kingdom of God.

Beth Barlet (01:13)
Hey everyone, welcome to our newest episode of the Salted Podcast. I hope you all are having a amazing week. I can’t wait to talk with you guys today about the second part of our eternal episode series, diving into what it means not only to live from a eternal perspective, but how by living in the eternal perspective,

We change what we prioritize in our relationships, in our actions, and overall in the course of our everyday lives. So I pray in Jesus name that the Holy Spirit would just have his way in your hearts today and that during this episode that you would get exactly what you need from the Lord and that you would just walk in that much more of his fullness and that much more of his wisdom.

on how to live a life that glorifies Him so that people around us may gain a greater understanding of who He is and His love and His nature through us. Alright, so last episode, we talked about what living through an eternal biblical perspective truly is and the biblical truths that we stand upon. Today, in this episode,

We will discuss that if we are to prioritize eternity in our minds and hearts, what does this truly look like? And how does this manifest in our everyday lives? All right, well, to start off, prioritizing eternity biblically is prioritizing God’s will in our lives. It is intentionally redirecting our thoughts and judging the value of our decisions based on their eternal significance.

and investing in a life not here on earth but what is to come.

It is understanding that keeping an eternal perspective is the wisest way to live as it keeps us from chasing empty dreams, pursuing material gratification and the temporary things of this world that we cannot take with us when we die. And many theologians and revivalists such as Lawrence Ravenhill after years of walking with the Lord, screamed to the next generations,

to stamp eternity on their hearts so that they don’t forget the wages of sin and the amazing grace, freedom, and abundance of life that can only come through a relationship with Jesus Christ. But it’s not enough just to be aware of eternity, but that we groan and yearn to be with Jesus and His second coming.

We are to yearn as if we are awaiting our wedding day and feast with our bridegroom king in heaven. And the anticipation that we have must be far above anything that we cling to or hold onto in this world.

That is why the preacher John Calvin prayed that the Lord would stamp eternity on his eyeballs and the Apostle Paul describes himself as an athlete competing for the prize of a crown in eternity.

We as Christians tend to live an inconsistent lifestyle, professing our belief in the eternal while still living as if this life is all that matters. And the problem is that we as humans are fickle, fallen, broken, and we get so focused on the temporary.

so distracted by the simple things and the busyness of everyday life, you know that we lose sight of the gravity of our eternal realities and we focus all our time, energy, and affections on the things that are temporary in this world and we live according to what we can see, touch, feel, and experience in our finite bodies. And because of our sinful nature, we are short-sighted, easily tempted, having trouble seeing beyond the matters of here and now.

with a tendency to get so caught up in our own will and what pleases man and our interests that we lose sight ultimately of God’s will and the higher eternal. We place more value on the physical than the spiritual and we tend to get so distracted from the ways of this world.

Prioritizing eternity and keeping our minds on things above keeps our hearts in the right perspective and helps us to put to death what belongs to our earthly nature, reminding us that because of these such as sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, idolatry, the wrath of God is coming. Colossians 3.5

We can take a look at how much eternity is prioritized and our souls valued by how we steward all that God has given to us on this earth and what we do where he has positioned us. For example, with our money, are we stewarding it for the kingdom of God and putting it toward advancing the gospel, feeding the hungry, clothing those who are in need and helping those who are sick? Are we investing our time in prayer?

by reading God’s word, by serving, by fulfilling our ministries as God commands us to make disciples, loving our neighbors and helping those in need, spending all our time on social media scrolling or TV and allowing the distractions of the world to overcome us. And on our work, are we just going to work every day or are we making time to invest by evangelizing, by teaching, by loving?

by showing the compassion, mercy, and love of Jesus and walking in integrity to bring people into the higher things of the Lord. And as parents, are we teaching and training and raising up our children to know God’s word, to know who Jesus is, to know about the gospel and prioritizing the spiritual above things over the temporary? You know, I also found that if we are prioritizing eternity, we’re also more at peace.

and that we’re walking in fuller freedom, releasing control, not focusing so much on the temporary stresses of this life, the small stuff that doesn’t matter in the long run, and remembering that what society deems is so important is nothing compared to what is to come. And if we are renouncing idols in this life, comfort, materialism, etc., I think we’d be that much more able to lose ourselves from idols of this world if we truly knew this wasn’t our home.

I really want to briefly talk about my time in Jordan about eight or so years ago when my husband and I were blessed to travel there when we went to the Holy Land in Israel. And I had only gotten saved about two years or so before and all I knew was that I loved Jesus But while we did a quick stop over in Jordan, we had a wonderful tour guide named Samir.

he was a Muslim and as we got to know him, I brought up Christianity and trying to little on me evangelize this Muslim who’s been practicing for 50 plus years. And I remember to this day what he thought about Christians and what he told me. And

He had traveled to the United States and I specifically remember him saying what he thought about Christians and their quote unquote grace sarcastically. And he said that we as Christians use grace as an excuse to live in sin and that all the Christians he knew of live sinful worldly lifestyles.

that it was a free for all on earth because they knew they would get to heaven and he explained to me that he didn’t know why anyone would want to be a Christian and that he would rather stay Muslim and through his good works remain right with God. But I remember hearing this man speak and I was shouting inside of me

That is not true. This is not true. And I love Jesus and I’m thankful for his grace and that is not what Christianity is for all that Jesus did for me on the cross out of my gratitude and love for him despite my sins that he died for me and now because he died for me and helped me to live that all I want to do is love him and obey his commands. But at the time in my walk in my immaturity I was so timid in my biblical knowledge and couldn’t really explain to him why his accusations were false or

if they really were real people he was talking about and if it was really true what he witnessed and how to explain to him the reason behind what he said was inconsistent with real Christianity. But now looking back almost 10 years later, I know he was talking about nominal Christianity and those who were only Christians by name, who in reality weren’t followers of Jesus at all based upon their actions and view of grace. That these so-called Christians

were those who were probably not born again and were those who didn’t hold the state of their future eternity as a priority. Those who didn’t value the grace of the gospel and in turn value their souls. And you know, speaking of value, the late Dietrich Bonhoeffer would describe these people as those who held a cheap form of grace. Those who didn’t understand the seriousness of sin, the reality of hell,

or the severe price that was paid for us by Jesus on the cross, or actually sat and meditated on his suffering, his torture, his painful death, and what it truly cost him so that we could be free and that we would have eternal life forever. You know, it was so funny. One of my mentors one time was trying to teach me about the value of our soul and what we prioritize. And she told me about a little story that

about several years ago that she had a garage sale and that they had this bunny and they wanted to get rid of this bunny and they didn’t care what it meant. So they literally put it up for sale, but just with a for free sign, take it for free. And I remember that she said that even with the free sign that bunny sat and sat and sat and they didn’t understand. And they thought because it’d be free that someone would come and take it right away.

after several hours of the bunny not even being looked at, she changed the sign and she actually put bunny for like a hundred dollars or something crazy. And immediately after she put a value on this bunny and increased the price tag that immediately the bunny was sold. And she tried to teach me this little, this little exercises, little lesson about value.

And that if we value something that we’re willing to pay the cost because of what it stands for us and what it means to us. And that the minute she put a value to that money, that someone was then willing to count the cost versus something being free without any value at all. And so he talks about how cheap grace is a preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance.

Baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, and absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ living incarnate. And like anything we possess, if it’s cheap to us, we are more likely to throw it away, just like that bunny. And I frequently go through my toddler toys and toss the cheap broken ones that accumulate in his closet.

He plays with them for like 10 minutes and loses interest in. But in contrast, I will never toss his hand-painted Bible in which all my friends and family wrote and highlighted scripture and prayed over his walk with the Lord.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field. For the sake of it, a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods.

Jesus asks, what value is gaining the whole world if we lose our souls for all eternity? And this is why the Bible constantly tells us it’s so important that we focus on and why we need to continually be transformed with renewing of our mind through God’s word, constantly submitting to the spirit to allow him to constantly give us his perspective, to not be conformed to the temporary ways of this world, setting our minds on things above, not earthly things.

remembering that our old self has died and that we are now hidden with Christ in God. Because if we don’t, we lose our eternal perspective and we are more susceptible to looking back like Lot’s wife to the ways of this world and losing our eternal priority.

When the gospel loses value in our lives, we are more likely to forfeit our heavenly birthright and eternal blessings, and as our perspective shifts, we begin to place more value on the temporary and the immediate pleasures of this world.

Because like the biblical figure Esau, we can forfeit every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm for worthless idols who sold his birthright and inheritance in the kingdom of God for a fleshy temporary bowl of stew.

If you remember the story in Genesis, Esau was the oldest of Isaac, the heir to the family’s inheritance. He wasn’t ignorant to God’s covenant to his grandfather Abraham and the miracles that were performed and the promise to God’s ascendance. And moreover, scripture reveals to us this wasn’t a sole account of his lack of respect toward God. The Bible describes him as a godless man who disobeyed and chose the flesh over God’s commands by rebelling and taking pagan wives.

and was an example who valued the temporary over the eternal, the physical over the spiritual, and would go on to teach us as an example to represent someone who was arrogant and reckless with his soul. And Esau selling his birthright indicated his lack of respect for the position and privilege in which he obtained. His careless treatment of his God-given blessings showed his true focus was on temporary desires over a lifetime of blessing. Esau despised his birthright.

he saw it as worthless and unimportant. Could Esau have been this way because he was highly favored by his father?

Could it be because he was an outdoor man, a skilled hunter, that he walked in pride, self-sufficiency, and arrogance, and maybe didn’t have the humility to feel the need for the things of God, that he could quote unquote provide for himself? Or perhaps his ways were better and wiser and God’s foolish, and he lived for the present and saw no good in the eternal? Genesis 25, 31 to 32 states, Jacob answered, then sell me today your birthright.

Esau said, See here, I am at the point of death. What good can this birthright do to me? And then Jacob gave Esau bread and a stew of lentils, and he ate and drank and rose up and went his way. And then Esau scorned his birthright as beneath his notice. We must intentionally guard what was bought for us and our heavenly inheritance by intentionally counting and bearing the cost, embracing that those who want to be Jesus’ disciples must deny themselves

and loosely attach themselves from the temporary pleasures of this world so that they may have a million-fold blessing in the next life. Jesus even said that those who don’t hate their closest loved ones, parents, wives, husbands, children, in comparison to their love for him are not worthy, but that he would reward them tenfold like the farmer who sold everything to buy the fields and that we are to even deliberately and consciously decide to forsake the things we value for the sake of the greater purposes of God’s kingdom, even family.

places of belonging, comfort, and fundamental human attachments.

Unlike Esau, we can be exhorted to be like those willing to sacrifice all that they had for the eternal, such as those listed in the Hebrews Hall of Fame, who lived for promises they knew they would not see in their lifetime, with their eyes set upon the author and perfecter of their faith. Men and women who fixed their eyes on Jesus, who willingly suffered, denied themselves pleasures of this earth, and sacrificed their lives, sometimes literally because of their faith in their eternal tomorrow.

Those who held onto things of this world loosely, refusing the allurements of this world, esteeming their approach of Christ’s greater wealth and the treasures of earthly life. Those who made completely different choices by what they valued the most.

Like the prophet Abraham who loved God so much, they prioritized their covenant with him, his promises, his love for him, willing to sacrifice his most prized possession.

And I get it. Life is busy. It’s hard. I know trying to take care of my newborn and toddler. Sometimes I have no time to even think or breathe. Even this week, the Lord show me how easy it is to get distracted and get off track. It’s yelling Lord killed this desire in me stamp eternity on my heart and my eyeballs. Grant me your desires. Help me overcome distraction, vanity, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life.

help me not to get caught up in the allurements of this world. Because it’s also through the power of His grace, taking the kingdom of heaven by violence as scripture says, refusing to let this world overcome us with distraction, fighting to stay in God’s word, fighting our flesh to make time for prayer, fighting to keep eternity on our eyeballs and stamped on my heart, fighting not to give up as Paul said to fight the good fight and not just embrace our identity as daughters but soldiers in Christ.

And we must not be scoffers. As described in 2 Peter, in light of knowing the coming judgment of fire and the return of Jesus to judge the living and the dead we are to live accordingly.

Lies that are characterized by holiness, righteousness, purity, and selfless love. Keeping our eyes on things above, keeping our eyes on what is to come will determine how we are to live, prioritizing the state of our hearts over our success, worldly happiness, and comfort.

I remember when one of my best friends, one Christmas, gave me the Box’s Book of Martyrs as a Christmas gift one year in order to grow me and exhort me higher in my faith.

Wow didn’t humble me and make me self-reflect upon the strength of my faith and my priority. If it came down to it, would I sacrifice everything, including my physical life and faith, truly believing because of what Jesus did that eternity is mine to possess? This week, I challenge you to sit with the Lord and ask yourself, what temporary things in this world are drawing my eyes and heart away from eternal treasures in heaven?

What are things in this life that seem so necessary in my flesh at this moment that you feel you would forfeit everything to have it? Is eternity continually at the forefront of your mind? And are you investing in heaven or only on things of this earth?

Sister, are a sojourner, a pilgrim. Is your life right now reflecting your eternal realities in which you believe? Are you prioritizing them? What sin must you run from that is hindering these priorities and holding you back on this earth that you need to lose for these priorities to come forth in fruition? I’m here to encourage you that your Redeemer lives and that in the end he will stand on this earth. And after your skin has been destroyed,

Yet in your flesh you will see God. We will all see him with our own eyes. And oh how I pray that our hearts would burn within us. Job 19.25.

Beth Barlet (20:55)
I pray this episode has blessed you today. I appreciate our time together and I hope our conversation has deepened your faith. Don’t forget to check out today’s show notes for episode links and additional information. Be sure to share this podcast with a friend, review it, and hit subscribe so you don’t miss one episode. Go to my website www.thesaltedpodcast.com and subscribe to my newsletter to be part of our Salted community. Remember,

Being salted takes intentionality. See you here next time.