Have you taken the time to watch the "stuff" that fills up increasingly more of an hour between the segments of your favourite television program or the pages of your favourite magazine?

The sponsors pay large sums of money to try and impress on your mind and heart the importance of their product.

They want you to believe that you need their product, often without really figuring out the cost to you.

The appeal is often to your sense of vanity (take note of the number of products to make you look or feel younger and more attractive). Or, improve your image or sense of worth in the eyes of others (just think about what others will believe about you when you are driving their vehicle).

Think too of the "fun" you will have (drinking our product with all your friends will make you more popular than you could ever imagine). The focus of each of these commercials is to try to generate an emotional response to the question, "What is in it for me?"

If you stop and think about the whole process of attaining their product you might not be so eager to go out and get it. Most us get the majority of our money by trading our life for it.

We work a certain number of hours at a specified dollar value per hour, or we work at a job for a specified salary. At the end of what has been determined as a "pay period" we receive an amount of money. We have traded our time, and in essence, a portion of our life, for that money.

The question now becomes, "Is this item which you have just seen on the comm e r c i a l worth, not just the money, but is it worth the investment of t h e required portion of your life to attain it?"

What is in it for me? Most people reading this article can identify at least something, maybe many things which you felt you just had to have and you went out and bought it, trading a portion of your life so that it was yours.

Five years after you bought that item, do you still have it? Do you know where it is? Is it still important to you? Yet you traded a portion of your life to get it!

My purpose is not to curb your spending habits, but to have you think a b o u t what is r e a l l y important in your life and to i n v e s t your life in more of those things, rather than to give in to the well designed advertising strategies pressuring you to trade your money for specific products.

Jesus asked a couple of very important questions that are recorded in Matthew 16:26. He asked, "What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? Moments before these questions Jesus had made a couple of very important statements.

He had said, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. {25} For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." (Matthew 16:2425)

This raises the question, "What do you believe to be important in your life and what are you prepared to invest your life for?"

Choose to make Jesus a priority in how you invest your time both in what you do and what you trade it for not being concerned about the question, "What is in it for me?" As you seek to put first the things that are eternally important, you may very well find that God will add into your life some of the things of this world as a bonus to you.