Forward in Faith 4 - Stay on Track - 2

2A – Beware of Outside Obstacles

God has a plan for everyone’s lives.

· God’s vision for our lives is like a map that shows where to get on the proper highway.

· Once we say yes to God’s will and God’s way for our lives, we begin the journey of putting feet to our faith by goingwhere He leads us to and doing what He has called us to do.

· In other words, our destiny has a destination

· Following God’s plan is like a car driving in their lane.

Review:

1 - FIND the track

2 - GET on track

3 - STAY on track

After you find that God DOES have a plan for your life

· After you have found the ENTRANCE ramp to start your journey.

· Now is the time to STAY on track until you reach your destination.

Philippians 3:14 NLT

14 I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Once the journey has begun, the second phase is to continue moving “forward in faith”, regardless of the obstacles and challenges ahead.

· Oftentimes, obstacles to our vision can appear internally or externally, or both!

· Inside obstacles to our journey are caused by internal issues such as – tiredness, greed, jealousy, etc. =

· Outside obstacles are the external challengesto achieving God’s will for our lives.

· Sometimes, external obstacles are situations beyond our control.

· Some external obstacles are caused by another person’s actions or inactions.

· Some negative events in life are caused by the willful and deliberate steps taken by another, often for their own interest, even if it means the detriment of your plans.

· Other obstacles are caused by inaction, or neglect, of another. They simply did not do what they were supposed to do, therefore affecting your progress, whether directly or indirectly.

o This is like a fellow driver drifting in and out of his lane while asleep at his wheel or distracted while texting or has spilled hot coffee in his lap, causing a series of knee jerk reactions that may cause his car to swerve wildly into your lane.

· Either way, remember to stay in your lane, no matter what, and remember that God’s Son is your Pilot, God’s Word is your Map, and God’s Spirit is your fire!

Potholes of problems = situations beyond your control

· You are driving along just fine, following God’s will for your life, when, all the sudden – WHAM! You hit something that seemed to come out of nowhere

· Hit something unseen – last minute

· Hurts along the way

· Damage cause by others – rocks from dump trucks

· Persecution when people do not approve or like where you are going

· Boycott – when people leave you because you are no longer beneficial to them

· Leaving you offended, upset, and frustrated

· This is why driver’s ed teaches “defensive driving”.

· IOW – watch out for the other guy.

· While we are to love everyone, it is probably not smart to blindly trust everyone.

Don’t Make A Crater Out A Pothole

It was just a pothole – not a crater, not a cliff

You were right

· doing the right thing – you did nothing wrong – but you hit it anyway - but it’s just a pothole

They were wrong

· It wasn’t right what they did to you - but it’s just a pothole

Don’t allow the enemy to make the situation bigger than it is -

Cast down pothole thoughts!

Yes, it hurts, but it’s just a pothole.

It came to pass, not to stay

Keep Your Eyes on the Road

2 Corinthians 4:17–18 NLT

17 For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

· Let’s be smarter than a pothole and stay on course.

· Your peace and focus are well worth the temporary trouble.

Fix the flat – get back on track

· get back on the road!

· Those you passed are now passing you!

DITCHES

Avoid the Ditches of Distractions

· “life gets in the way”

· If excitement leaves, entertainment enters

Distracted driving – attention diverted to trivial things

cell phone generation – causes wrecks

· Distracted driving means that you are going the right way but are not giving your full attention to where you are going

· The warning signs are everywhere – HANDS free – police warning signs – fees – arrest

· leading cause of accidents – just because everyone seems to be doing it, does not make it right

· Hypocrisy and irony-

· Not viewed as bad, more socially acceptable,

· but causes more accidents than dui?

· Selfishness- I need this. (text, call, finish this game, watch this movie, update this app, find someplace to eat…)

· I can handle it - multitask

· Self-exam: Do you have distractions based on a fear of missing out?

Ditches of deception lead to the cliff of error

· One side or the other – extremes – all or nothing

· Just a little off course, even for a short time, can cause a wreck

· How many of God’s people started out right, but have been drifting off course for a long time?

Blind lead blind

Matthew 15:13–14 NLT

13 Jesus replied, “Every plant not planted by my heavenly Father will be uprooted, 14 so ignore them. They are blind guides leading the blind, and if one blind person guides another, they will both fall into a ditch.”

Don’t listen to those who don’t know what they are doing or where they are going.

· Armchair quarterbacks

· Monday morning critics

· Parking lot prophets

· Retweeting memes without knowing what they mean

OFFRAMPS

Desire to Detour

Avoid the temptations to exit

· On a long journey, we can drive for hours without hearing any instructions from our GPS.

· We can start to wonder if we are still going on the right direction, or if the GPS is even working and knows where we are.

Stay off the “Offramp of Opportunity”

· Grass is NOT greener

· The desire to detour comes in when we still Want to go to the same destination, but a different way.

· We claim to still want what God has for us; we just have a better way to go about it.

· We convince ourselves that we know a better way:

· No tolls, shortest distance. Quickest time, most use of freeways…

· Avoid the areas known for bad weather – we like it nice…

God calls you to - not from

· Dinner of deception- been on my heart. Until you don’t go along with it. Not concerned about you but want to use you as a pawn for their own means.

· Job offers to leave

· House offer to buy

· Pastor is appreciated on the road

· Evangelist invited to start or take a church

· Singer invited to join another church praise team

· This insecurity can cause one to desire to exit or even turn around!

Nicky Gumbel - BIOY

It is always a temptation to be self-centred and to seek great things for ourselves – whether through money, success, position, fame, reputation or respectability – but we must never seek any of these things for ourselves. At the end of the day, it does not matter if our life appears to have been a failure and ends in disappointment. What matters is faithfulness to the Lord. God will reward each person according to their faithfulness, not according to their apparent success (see Matthew 25:14–30).

When you are faithful to God, you allow Him to work and to achieve His plans through your life. Jeremiah and Baruch must have felt like failures, and yet few people in history have had a greater impact than they. The prophecies they recorded are a key part of God’s revelation to the world, and contain some of the most important prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament – and how many authors can claim a readership of billions over 2,500 years after their death?

Avoid the Offramp of Offense on the Highway of Life

· When confronted with personal issues, such as sin, or simply when told to grow up, many end time followers of Christ have taken their eyes off the map and turned them toward the makeup mirror hanging from the sun visor in front of them.

· Their focus changes from outward to inward, from God’s desire to their desire.

· Their questions change from “what about God?” to “What about me?”

· As a result, many take it upon themselves to reroute their life, without consulting God or even despite His attempts of “course correction” of speaking to their hearts by the Holy Spirit.

· This offramp is taken by many, claiming they are not appreciated, and sometimes resort to acts of spitefulness and revenge – while using religious excuses – such as “My season is over” or claiming, “God said”, when He did not.

· Some even jump the “guard rails” of personal conscience, choosing to be led by their personal feelings versus the voice of God.

· When these negative choices are made, it hurts not only God’s plan for their lives, but the blessing God wanted them to be for other lives.

Stay in your lane!

· Resist the temptation to change lanes –

· due to hitting potholes or other setbacks, stuck traffic, etc.

JESUS stayed in His lane – as SAVIOR

Jesus was determined to fulfill His destiny – even in the face of death threats

Luke 13:31–32 NLT

31 At that time some Pharisees said to him, “Get away from here if you want to live! Herod Antipas wants to kill you!” 32 Jesus replied, “Go tell that fox that I will keep on casting out demons and healing people today and tomorrow; and the third day I will accomplish my purpose.

PAUL stayed in his lane – as APOSTLE

· Paul was able to shake off the challenges of life and keep moving forward.

· He was able to survive shipwrecks, get back up after being beaten, encourage himself when chased out of town by his fellow countrymen, write letters of encouragement to his churches while he himself sat in Roman dungeons, all while on his way to Jerusalem.

· Why? Because he was driven by the love of Christ and determined to complete God’s mission for his life.

Acts 20:22–24 NLT

22 “And now I am bound by the Spirit to go to Jerusalem. I don’t know what awaits me, 23 except that the Holy Spirit tells me in city after city that jail and suffering lie ahead. 24 But my life is worth nothing to me unless I use it for finishing the work assigned me by the Lord Jesus—the work of telling others the Good News about the wonderful grace of God.

V .24 (NKJV) “none of these things move me”

· Don’t allow the things of earth get in the way of the heavenly vision!

· Maybe your windshield is cracked but is better than living in the rear-view mirror!

Acts 26:19 ESV

19 “Therefore, O King Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly vision,

Stay in YOUR lane – even when you are hurting

· Even if it’s

· Tired - Boring, Hard, long

· Tempted- Being passed by those in the fast lane. Copilot - Second fiddle

· Second lane is the BEST lane if that’s where God wants you. – just ask Joshua, and Elisha

o Blessing in disguise - Fewer responsibilities, accountability, and pressure

Stay out of LIARS lane

· Refuse the enemy who tries to get you off course.

· The enemy tries to torment you with lies that you are not good enough, that you are not called by God but that it was your own imagination.

· Cast down thoughts that you are insignificant

· Refuse the feeling that what you are doing and where you are going doesn’t really matter anyway.

· Refuse the thoughts that you should just stop (quit) and even turn around and go back to where you came from

Closing: – How is your ETA?

We need to remember that God’s way is always the best way!

· Many times, in life, God has no shortcuts!

For example, God took the Israelites the long way around the desert

· because they were not ready for war and would have made a YOU turn back to Egypt - the very place God just delivered them from.

After all, sometimes not hearing anything from God - is a GOOD thing!

· It means to keep doing what you are doing and keep going where you are going!

· You are in the will of God, and everything is OK!

· In the course correction of life, Silence is golden!

Philippians 3:14 NKJV

14 I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

· drive with passion and purpose

· It may have been a long time and you may be tired, but encourage yourself

· stay encouraged

· be encouraged by others