But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. — Matthew 6:33
I will never forget the decision I faced when I finished my Bachelor’s degree. For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to be an accountant. Numbers made sense to me. Business fascinated me. I had built my education around that pursuit, and as I finished my accounting degree, the path seemed clear. A local accounting firm was actively recruiting me. The opportunity was real, and it was exactly what I had been working toward.
But at the same moment, the company I was working for in healthcare was offering me a promotion, a new entryway into higher-level leadership that I had not been anticipating. Two paths. Two pursuits. One I had planned for my entire adult life and one that had arrived unexpectedly.
By most opinions, the accounting position was the obvious choice. It was what I had studied for. It was what I had said I wanted. It was the pursuit I had been chasing for years. But God made it clear that He had led me to healthcare for a reason. And I stayed.
Looking back, I can see what I could not fully see in that moment. The healthcare path was not a detour from my purpose. It was the purpose. Every year that followed, the leadership development, the people I served, the platform that eventually became Another Well Ministries was built on the foundation of the path I almost did not choose.
Jesus addresses the question of pursuit in the Sermon on the Mount with directness that is hard to miss. He does not say stop pursuing things. He says reorder the pursuit. Seek ye first the kingdom of God. Not second. Not when everything else is settled. First. And then watch what happens to everything else.
Zacchaeus understood the power of a redirected pursuit. He was a short man in a large crowd, and he wanted to see Jesus badly enough to run ahead and climb a tree. Not a dignified move for a chief tax collector. Not the kind of thing a man of his position would normally do. But his desire to see Jesus was stronger than his concern for how he looked doing it. He pursued. And the moment Jesus saw him in that tree and called him down, everything Zacchaeus had been previously pursuing lost its hold on him. He stood up and gave away half of what he owned before the meal was finished.
The encounter with Jesus did not just change what Zacchaeus did. It changed what he wanted. That is what proximity to Jesus does to our pursuits. It does not eliminate ambition or desire. It reorders them. The things we were chasing with everything we had begin to look different when we spend time with the One who said, “Seek first the kingdom.” Some of those pursuits fall away entirely. Others are redirected toward something with more lasting significance. And occasionally God leads us away from the path we planned toward the one He already had in mind.
What are you pursuing right now with your time, your energy, your attention, and your resources? Not what you say you value. What you actually chase. That pursuit is evidence. It is telling the story of what actually has your heart.
And a life that has been with Jesus tends to produce a pursuit that points somewhere beyond the things this world offers. Seek first. Everything else finds its proper place from there. What you pursue with your time and attention is the clearest map of what you actually value. What is your pursuit arguing for?
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