How to Tell What a Person Values

17-year-old Piyawat Harikun of Thailand was an ardent gamer who spent countless hours playing battle games on his computer. 32-year-old James Howells of Wales began mining crypto (#Bitcoin) on his laptop in 2009, and then he disassembled it a year later and stored it. Maureen O'Connor was the mayor of San Diego, California, and she loved to gamble by playing video poker at various casinos.

Piyawat was found near his computer chair in his bedroom dead from a stroke after multiple days and nights of gaming.  James accidentally threw away his hard drive in a UK landfill containing 7,500 bitcoins, worth $412,326,600 dollars as of this writing. Maureen stole $2.1 million from her husband's charitable foundation and eventually lost in excess of $1,000,000,000 (billion!).

Values

Values are considered our basic and/or fundamental beliefs that motivate our attitudes and actions. They serve to assist us with respect to what we deem is important to us. Values consist of the personal qualities we choose to incorporate into our life in order to guide our actions. Values are the type of individual we seek to become, the way we go about treating self and other people, and our relationship with the world in which we live. Values provide us with the general guidelines for our conduct.

We can say that values are those things that seek what is good, desirable, or worthwhile. Values are always the motive behind our ambitious actions.

Based on the examples of the three people above, we can readily see that many of us have misplaced values. These individuals placed their values based on what the world teaches us. Worldly values consist of acquiring wealth, gaining power, seeking out pleasure, exacting revenge, seeking fame, engaging in vanity, and pursuing status.

What God values

God teaches us the opposite of worldly value. These consist of kindness and respect for all people rather than power. His everlasting word teaches us humility rather than of status. He instructs us that our honesty and generosity is far more important than wealth. We learn from the Bible that self-control is considerably better than self-indulgence. Additionally, we learn that forgiveness should be valued above revenge. Christian values revealed by God promote peace and good will among all people in accordance with the purposes of God. 

Worship

The central value that we should hold dear is our worship of God. Too much of our attention towards material things like houses and property, vehicles, fashion items, jewelry, our physical appearance, and loads of entertainment can get the best of us and raw us away from God. You've seen it; I've seen it. We have all experienced this.

But these above lead us into idolatry! We have a tendency to chase after wealth, power, fame, pleasure and/or status.  

Then there is an excessive devotion to our self, our work, our hobbies, our respective countries, ideologies that are averse to God, a focus on our heroes and leaders, and yes, even our family.

Were you aware that the above-mentioned according to the Bible are forms of greed, covetousness, arrogance, gluttony and pride which are all idolatry? Of course, in moderation, none of the above are bad, but rather it is where our heart lies, what we value most is what counts.

Changing our values

We can change. We must change if we are to honor and glorify God. But how can we change and what changes should we make?

First, we are changed when we believe on the Lord Jesus. When we believe we receive the Holy Spirit. He is our teacher and guide and if we follow His promoting, we will move towards holiness.

These are the values we should adopt: worship to God, kindness towards all people, humility, honesty, morality, managing our time and money in a Godly way, refraining from hypocrisy and self-righteousness, avoiding the urge to seek revenge, and forging others.

Let's not be like Piyawat, James and Maureen above. We can and should continue to grow and change to please God our Creator, even Jesus who alone saves by faith alone in Him alone. Put away idolatry and serve God today, tomorrow and going forward.