Skip MacCarty, Pastor

I met Pastor Skip when we both worked as Associate Pastors at Pioneer Memorial Church. Big projects included Tuesday Night Live, Net ‘98, and his leadership in the development of the Contagious Adventist seminar.

In addition to the careful thought and wisdom that Skip brought to our staff, there’s a saying of his that I’ve repeated to others and continues to impact my spiritual life each morning: “The greatest temptation any of us will ever face is whether or not we will spend time alone with Jesus every day.”

I recently asked Skip about this statement. Here’s his response:

The reason that is such a challenge for many of us type A’s especially, myself included, is that after spending a block of time, anytime, we like to have something to show for it, something we’ve actually accomplished. But closet time in devotion doesn’t work like that. We just have to believe that it’s the most important time we spend every day whether or not we have anything to show for it at the end of the day. We have to believe that the day will be different, we will be different, even when we have no tangible evidence on many days that that actually happened.

I’ve found Skip’s words to be so true in my life. Knowing that it is the devil who is tempting me to not spend time with Jesus—to give other things a higher priority—often puts things in the perspective of a spiritual battle and I choose to be on the side that wins.