Don't wait to focus on what's really important

Next month will be my 20th anniversary of moving to Sandpoint.

You don’t have to live here long before you discover that summer is a sacred season in Bonner County. Of course I love the weather, but what I love most is that we tend to spend more time doing things together with people we love. I always start the summer with this grand plan of spending more time with my kids, friends, and people in our church doing things that will build forever memories.

However, summer seems to go so fast, and my kids are getting older and have their own friends and summer agenda. I know you don’t want to hear it, but it will just be a blink of the eye and the leaves will begin to turn their golden colors and fall will be upon us. Each year I tell myself I am going to do a better job getting the things done I want to get done. Yet, every year summer comes to and end too soon. If we are not careful life happens the same way.

I am reminded that we need to put our efforts into the things that are important. Don’t let the immediate crowd out the things that matter. I recently had a conversation with someone who said, “When things slow down I really want to get more involved in the ministries of the church.” I had to break the bad news to them that things will never slow down. If the important things are going to get done, if you are going to invest in the eternal, we have to make them the priority of our life. Can you think of a worse tragedy than to get to the end of your life and think, “I wish I would have spent more time on the things that were important to God?”

I am just as guilty as the next person when giving into the temptation to let the most important things take a back burner to the craziness of schedules and life. I want to be a person who loves deeper, lives sweeter, and ends up becoming who God created and dreamed I could be. However, I can want something or even set it as a priority in my life, but if I don’t actually do something about it, it just becomes another lost summer dream.

Why don’t you join me this summer and we decide together to make this summer count? Spend time with people that matter. Make time for the important not just the most immediate need. Reach out and serve your neighbor. If you really want to become a person of deeper faith and get your life on the trajectory of God’s path, maybe the time to begin is today.

Chad Wilks is the senior pastor at Sandpoint Church of the Nazarene. He can be reached at chad@sandpointnaz.org.