Is God included in your summer plans?
By Pastor Paris Pasch
Maybe you’re planning a summer vacation, a summer job, or time at the waterfront cabin.
All these are wonderful goals and I would like to suggest including some spiritual goals as well.
Maybe you could plan on reading through the New Testament portion of the Bible during the summer. Maybe as you awake at the cabin you commit to going outside and sitting with your favorite cup of coffee and spending 5 minutes with God, talking to Him about all that you enjoy about His creation while listening to Him speak to your heart and mind about what He has planned for you in your life. Every time I’ve done this type of exercise, God always talks to me about how much He loves my neighbor, my fellow Hastings residence and the world. I’m almost always sent back from my vacation eager to connect to others for a significant purpose.
Maybe you could plan to sit lakeside with your kids on a Sunday morning and have your own personal church experience with a small, simple form of worship to God and taking turns sharing a favorite portion from God’s word. You don’t have to be an ordained minister to hang out with God.
Enjoying the summer in Minnesota is not sinful, nor is spending quality time with your family. Having fun is not absent from God’s list of things to do. However, we should not take a vacation from God. If you are not connected to a wonderful group of people who are identified as a church family, then maybe when you spend time interacting around issues of faith, you will grow to see the value in advancing God’s plan for humanity over advancing your own plan.
But what can you do with God if you’re taking on a summer job? Well, you can do your job as if you were working for God, and then your temporary employer gets blessed by your actions as you get paid. You can commit to using a small portion of your compensation to be generous to someone in need. You could acknowledge that God gave you the job, the income, and the talent to do the job, and help a local church advance the mission God has given them.
Colossians 3:23–24 Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters,24 since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
As you can see, all of this is about planning to do something with your wonderful summer rather than just stumbling through it. God has a plan and He wants you to enjoy it, so plan Him in. It won’t happen by accident; because, far too many things seek to latch on to our lifeboat like zebra mussels and attempt to slow us down. God wants you free from the summer blahs, and get the most out of the life He has set before you. Have fun in the summer SON.