A method and apparatus are provided for prioritizing message flows in a state machine execution environment. A state machine is disclosed that employs a flow graph that provides a flow control mechanism The flow control mechanism defines a plurality of states and one or more transitions between the plurality of states, wherein one or more tokens circulate within the flow graph and execute functions during the one or more transitions between the states The disclosed state machine parses one of the tokens to extract one or more predefined information elements; and assigns a priority to the token based on the extracted information elements and a state occupancy of the token, wherein the assigned priority controls an order in which the token is processed.