How Cooks Forest Helped Me Stay Focused

For the past week, Emily and I have been leading worship for a couple’s retreat in Lancaster, PA with our great friends Brad & Rebekah. On our way back to the ‘Burgh, we decided to drive a couple hours out of the way and spend a night at the Gateway Lodge in Cooks Forest, PA.

Beautiful place. Quiet, serene, peaceful, slow.

Did you hear that? Slow.

Mini excursions like this help me re-focus my life on what is most important. For me, it’s not that my job is extremely busy (though there are seasons, for sure) it’s the way I go about my job.

• I make it busy
• I’m stressed when I don’t need to be
• I don’t spend enough time simply waiting on the Lord in prayer
• I do things I could delegate
• I race about doing menial tasks rather than focusing on people
• I spend too much time doing what Scott Belsky calls “Insecurity Work” (Twitter, Facebook, Reading Blogs, checking stats)

Cooks forest is reminding me to focus on what matters. So I decided to write out a mini-list of some of my ‘main things’. I want to use my time wisely to focus and accomplish goals in these areas. Hopefully it will inspire you to write a list yourself.

• Seek God’s face first thing every morning
• Spending time with my wife, the most important person in my life
• Continue to write songs for the church to sing
• Make this blog an encouraging resource for worship & church leaders
• Continue raising up worship leaders and musicians at APC
• Invest myself in creating a culture of worship at APC
• Raise up leaders and make disciples of young adults in the Pittsburgh area
• Loving people and leading them to Christ

So what’s your list? How do you keep yourself focused on the ‘main things’ in your life? I encourage you to find a peaceful spot (doesn’t have to be cook’s forest :)) and think, pray, & write. It will go a long way. Go ahead, you have time. Just do it. You can’t afford not to.