Think about this for a minute. Think about the answer to this question before you go any further. What is the single most important past, present, and future thing in your life? By that I mean what is the most important and impactful aspect of your your life before this very moment, during this very moment, and from this very moment forward? What is your primary focus and goal that you focus on more than anything else?
Now, having answered that question for yourself, let’s look at some different things that can effect the answer we came up with. If we are a Christian then we all could (and hopefully did) have the same answer, some form of God. It could have been Jesus. It could have been your spiritual life. It could have been your relationship with God. Maybe it was where you will spend eternity. All of those things relate back to God. Something dealing with God is the perfect answer. It’s like being in Sunday school as a kid. When the teacher asked a question and you didn’t know the answer or you were unsure, you couldn’t go wrong with Jesus. Everyone that attended Sunday school as a kid knows what I’m talking about. When you gave that answer, there was a decent percentage chance that it was going to be right. If it wasn’t exactly right, at least you were in the right neighborhood. The same applies to the first question I just asked.
I hope your answer to the first question was something to do with God. Mine was. But, if you are anything like me, there are a lot of things that get in the way of that and distract us from that focus. There are so many crazy things going on in our world right now. Many of those things serve as distractions. Many of them tear us away from God if we let them.
What if… we worried as much about our relationship with God as we do other people’s opinions and what they do and how they think. The Covid 19 pandemic has led to a lot of division. Instead of it uniting us to defeat it and do what we need to do to get this country back up and running, I have seen people lose friends over opinions. I have seen it divide us even more than we already were before. If we put as much effort into being more Christlike as we do ridiculing people for the way they handle the pandemic, we might all be closer to God than we were in March. But, we let what someone else thinks about it and how it was handled effect us and how we perceive those people. We talk bad about those people or let it negatively effect how we go about each day. We shouldn’t, but we do. We let what other people drive or the house they live in either cause us to be jealous or look down on them, depending on what end of the spectrum they are on. We judge people by their appearance. We see people that have a different sense of style than us or different hair color than we do and automatically have thoughts about them and we have no clue if they are accurate or not. It is things that simple that can cause us to stumble.
What if… we put our time with God before other things that stand in our way. There are so many things that take us away from time with God. We don’t think we have enough time. Our day is too busy to sit down for some alone time and feel God’s peace and power. We have too much to do when we wake up and we stay up too late to get up earlier the next day. We put other interests before our time with God. We have activities planned during worship time with God. Sporting events take precedence over time with God on Sundays. Other activities during the week can keep us from being involved in youth activities or other church events at times. I’m not saying that we will never miss church or a church event. But when we let these things take over once, then twice, then several times, it just becomes easier and easier to let it happen again and again. That is how we slip away from God. That is how we fall away and need God’s mercy to come back home to him. That is the wonderful thing about the God we serve. He welcomes us at any time with open arms if we truly seek a relationship with him.
What if… we claim to say and do all the right things, but never really seek him. Maybe we never really follow the two greatest commands, love God and love your neighbor. Matthew 7:21-23 says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ That is a little scary to me. It’s not just about proclaiming to be a Christian. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. These verses make me think about all the times I haven’t put God first. That makes me think back to all the times when I was a lukewarm Christian (I have talked about that in here before). What if Jesus had came back to Earth then? Would I have been one that He said that about? Would He have said he never knew me? I put a lot of things before God at that time. I still do at times, but I try to get better each day I’m given the opportunity.
So the final question is, what if Jesus comes back today? It’s going to happen at some point! Is our name in the Book of Life? In Revelation 3:5 Jesus says, “He who overcomes will, like them, be dressed in white. I will never blot out his name from the book of life, but will acknowledge his name before my Father and his angels.” That’s what I want to happen one day for my family and myself. But, I also want everyone else I know to hear those words too. One thing I have thought a lot about during this quarantine is that we can always get better at being a Christian. It is a lifelong process. I have really examined life the last three months and realized that things slowing down has made me aware of some things I didn’t realize. I had things that I allowed to distract me and pull me away from God because I was “too busy.” There is always room for improvement in everything we do, and that includes being a Christian. It’s not over when we become a Christian, but it is a lifelong journey of ups and downs. We must be diligent in our desire to grow closer to God. The saying about talking the talk and walking the walk still rings true today, maybe more than ever. It is easy to talk the talk. It is easy to proclaim to be a Christian. The challenge is walking the walk. That is difficult. There are distractions everywhere we look. Satan works hard to find ways to separate us from God. We must work harder to stay close to Him.
My challenge for us this week is to think about all the things that are distractions to us. It is different for everyone. Everyone has different struggles and temptations. This week examine what those distractions look like in your own life. Maybe we make a list of them. Maybe we put them in the notes in our phone. Do whatever you need to do to make it work for you. Once we get that list compiled, set aside time each day to pray to God about these things. Pray that He will help us keep our priorities straight. Pray that we can keep all of these things second to our Creator. In the grand scheme of life, none of the things that will be on that list matter near as much as where our family, our friends, and ourselves will spend eternity. What if Jesus returned today, would our devotion to God outweigh distractions from God? Would our name be in the “Book of Life”? If we are not confident in the answer to that question, what if…we rearrange our priorities to get right with God and lead others to him as well!!!