Core Values: What are they? What are yours?
Core Value: What is it, what does this mean? Breaking it down can help… “Core” is the center, central, most important part of something and “Value” is worth, importance, a standard or standards lived by. So “Core Value” is the central, most important ideal or standard you live by. It is what keeps your feet steady on the road you travel, the journey you take. It is what is most important to you in life. It helps guide your thoughts and decisions. It can be a number of things and it is different for each and every individual. One may choose career while another may choose family. A small list of core values can be for example: Adventure, Control, Education, Faith, Family, Friends, Freedom, Fun, God, Happiness, Health, Honor, Independence, Integrity, Intimacy, Marriage, People, Power, Security, Self-reliance, Success, Wisdom…anything that is most important to you.
Core Values and knowing yours is vitally significant. As mentioned above, it or they will help you keep steady in your walk of life and as long as your core values are good, so your decisions will be. Core Values can and will most likely change from time to time as you mature or go through different steps in your life.
As for me, these days my core values are God, the fruit of the Spirit- mainly love, family, friends, and people. I think as a child it was probably centered on family and wanting and needing to please them, as a teenager it probably changed to self-reliance, self-gratification and fun. In my twenties and thirties it went back to family with friends added and in the mix security. Now I have learned and am still learning to trust in God for all other things (security, health, wisdom, fun….); setting Him as the central value of my life. With God all things are possible…Matthew 19:26. And with God being number one, love follows Him. God is love and love covers everything! 1 John 4:16, 4:18; Proverbs 10:12; Romans 5:5, 8:28, 13:8. In loving others you want to do what is best for them; therefore you walk in integrity and honor; showing respect and building upon the relationship in trust and understanding. The fruit if the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness gentleness and self-control…the WORD goes on to say that against such things there is no law. (Galatians 5:22,23) With such things, we cannot help but touch the lives of others in a positive way. I believe “Love” being the root of it all. If we love then all these follow; could be why it was listed first.
Love is followed by family, friends, and people. If God and love are the foremost important core values then my family, friends and the people I encounter/meet will be recipients of both God and His love. For with love, God’s love flowing through, they will receive from Him all they are looking for and longing for. With God and love I can instill into their lives faith, hope, joy and peace. Faith to help them persevere and trust; hope brings confidence and optimistic expectations of seeing God’s goodness allowing joy to set in and peace which helps them find rest in the midst of all things. It is necessary; it is what I owe others, an encounter with God. With God and His love I want to help motivate people to be all they were destined to be. I want to encourage them, inspire them, and walk with them. I want the best for them in all things.
1 Corinthians 13 is a whole chapter on love. “Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.
If I keep this as my center focus, my core values, then all decisions I make with God, family, friends and other people will be made in love, in the fruit of the Spirit and for their good. All conversations with them should bring life and blessings and grace. It should build them up not tear them down. Even when it is to bring correction or redirection; this is done with love, mercy and grace. 1 John 3:18 says…”let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.” There is a time for words of love in affirmation or correction and as I wrote above and the Word of God says…words we speak can bring life or death, blessings or curses but the love we show in deed and truth has such a lasting impact. And all these should lead them closer to the Lord which is the ultimate purpose…seeing that not one should perish but have everlasting life so that we remain in unity with one another and the God-head for eternity.
Core Value….Matthew 22L36-40; Mark 12:30-33
“Love the LORD our GOD with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind and with all our body (strength). This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it…Love our neighbor as ourself.”