Season of Success

Welcome

Slide 1

Sermon Outlines

- Take notes

- Discussion questions (during discussion times)

- May not say all the blanks (turn to over and its on the back)

Follow-up Groups

Follow-up Work book (6 sessions after this event is over) Why? Conferences, camps, church events - easy to forget.

Reality - spend 7 1/2 hours at this event.

Give about 1 hour and 1/2 a week for the next six weeks.

- 30 min to read the material and an hour to sit around with other guys and talk about it.

Might be new - not hard, just sit around and talk like we will this weekend.

1 1/2 hours for six weeks (9hours) and you will double your investment

Over 120,000 men have been to events like this and their response is they get 5-10 times the benefit if they follow up like this instead of just attend the event.

This weekend we are going to be talking changes and Seasons in our lives.

Slide 2

If I live to 80 yrs old - Tombstone 1980 - 2060

The dash represents our life.

This weekend - what will you do with your dash.

what will stand for How will you handle different situations God brings into each of our lives.

SLIDE 3

Seasons are always in chronological order

In more than one season at a time.

A. time of rebuilding new career, relationship, new community,

B. Time of reflection God is calling us to do some re-evaluation in our lives. (New decisions, commitments)

The plan at the end of this weekend to have a game plan that you can hold on to in whatever season you find yourself in. And that you can learn everything God wants you to learn during that time.

As we dive in, remember “What will you do with your dash?"

1. Season of success.

Slide 4

Everyone wants to be a success

Slide 5

But what is success? What does it mean to be successful? Hear it alot and I think we forget what it means.

Names some successful men…

Its interesting the names we come up with.

- pinnacle in a field. - Fame recognition wealth

All these ideas are wrapped up in our instantaneous vision of what success it.

This reveals what effect culture has on us…

I want to help us unravel that a bit and figure out how each of us feel about success and how should we really be thinking about success.

2 kinds of men

1. “You know, it’s really interesting, because he loves his work. For six months, he’ll be so involved in it, so engrossed in it, he’ll be pursuing these projects, and he’ll just come home exhilarated, he’s animated, he’s excited about it, he’ll just kind of delve into it. And then all of the sudden, one day he just seems to cut off.

And he starts complaining about things, complaining about his job, complaining about the house, complaining about the kids, and so month after month it will be like that until all of a sudden, he’ll turn again and he’ll get involved for another couple of months in his job and be all excited and animated.” She says “I just don’t understand. I don’t understand what it is. He has a beautiful home, a beautiful family, a great job. How can a man have everything he wants, and still not be happy?”

2. Another man was given an opportunity. He was a moderately successful business man in his community. He wasn’t making a lot of money, but he was doing ok. And he had an opportunity, somebody noticed him in a meeting and liked what they saw, so they called him in and asked him if he would like to take over a sales position that they had in their company. It would probably more than double his salary. And as they started talking about this position and what would be involved in it, he was excited about the opportunity and the gifts and strengths and skillsets seemed like a perfect match.

He liked the vision of the company, but as he got down to the details, he asked, “How often would I be away from home?” His potential boss said, “Well, that’s the wrong question. The right question is how often would you be at home?”

And he said, “Ok, well how often would I be at home?” And he said, “Well you’d probably be at home one or two weekends a month.” And so as he thought about this, he thought about what all the extra money could do and all the things he might be able to get with that. He finally came to the decision that it wasn’t worth it. And that he could find his value and invest himself in other ways that would be more important than that extra money. And so he made a totally different decision about his career success.

What’s the difference

How they define success.

How we define success will determine what we pursue in our life.

If we define success by…

- friends that like us - Nice family - Business well paid

- Being a politician - Having a reputation in the community

That’s what we will pursue - that’s what we feel will give us value

We need to define success in a biblical way.

- pursue biblical success and not what culture defines as success.

2 Kinds of success (SLIDE 6)

Calling and Ambition

1st man - he had everything and was still not happy He was pursuing ambition and not his calling.

Slide 7

True success means to satisfy our calling not our ambition

Ambition will never satisfy

Eccelsiastes 2 (Slide 8)

For you

It may not be ambition in career or profession

- Maybe security

- safety Personal comfort or pride

2. Ambition: Why is to do attractive?

(SLIDE 9)

What is ambition so attractive to us?

Francis Schaeffer talked about the two impoverished values of our age and he described them as affluence and personal peace.

He said basically most of the people in Western civilization, they want to be affluent, they want to have enough money to do whatever they want, and they want to find personal peace. They want to make sure that they don’t have to suffer, that they don’t have any problems in their life.

Dwell on it…

- How many of us basically have enough money to do the things we want to do? - Probably work hard to accomplish that - Security alarms, insurance, take safety precautions How many try to avoid any kind of problems or discomfort in our lives.

We want affluence and personal peace - we feel like those things are going too be meaningful - help us find success.

They look good for a while - end up not satisfying us

They end us being idols we worship rather than worship Jesus Christ alone.

God tells us in his ten commandments “ You should have no other God before me.”

THis view of success we often get sucked into in they world can become an idol.

If we can just have....

But the next thing you have - guess what - you want something else.

That is what ambition does - seduces us - the next big thing will be enough.

Big hole we are trying to fill with a spoon - little spoon 20 foot pit.

Meanwhile there is a front end loader ready to come - Finding success through God.

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3. Calling - What is it

Slide 10

What does it mean to find success through our calling?

In the Bible 4 types of calling

These are all callings around our life from God - but at its fundamental level what is the contrast between pursuing ambition and calling

Illustration

what was the point of this illustration? Well, what happened here? I called him, and what did he do? He answered. Right?

It is being someone who answers

It means you have to say I am not the total authority in my life. I don’t just do whatever I want, whenever I want. When the phone rings I answer.

Pursuing success in terms of God’s calling, means that we are going to have to answer to Him, not ourselves. When he calls, we answer.

Slide 11

Paul talks about his calling in Phil 3:12-14

Being a called person means login in response to God

Its not living every day to do what you want, or for achievement, it’s living in response to God and his will for your life.

Pursuing success through ambition and calling are both hard work

Difference is when you look at the end of that hard work - how many regrets will you have.

How do we pursue success through our calling

Big Idea (Slide 13) Integrity is a one to one correlation between my Bible, my belief and my behavior.

Work backwards from the end - Behavior

These 3 things - Bible Belief and Behavior are like dominoes

There is a problem in our behavior because there is a problem with our belief. Our belief knocks us down and gets us off course.

Our belief allows us to obey.

We have to believe something is a reasonable thing to do. If not we will not do it - Our belief leads to our behavior.

We have to look at our lives and realize the sin we see - is coming out of the beliefs that we have.

Hebrews 11 (SLIDE 14)

All the people we see are listed as people who obey God and did tremendous things.

Notice it says BY FAITH

It was their faith in God that allowed them to obey.

If we want to have a revival of behavior, we have to have a revival of our belief.

That belief comes from the Bible - it comes from the truth of Gods word. That is where we need to center our belief.

If there is a problem with our belief, it is going to knock down our behavior like dominoes.

We have to go back and say…

Where do our beliefs come from? How do we get those straight?

They have to start at the right place - The Bible

Link between Belief and The Bible

The Bible is God’s Revelation of His truth and that is where we understand the calling that he has on our life.

That is where we understand where success really comes from. We ave to submit to his authority. We have to hear his voice, love his wordand APPLY IT

Those who hear mhy words and do them.

Suddenly our beliefs are transformed and our minds are changed.

SLIDE 15 Romans 12:2

What will you do with your dash

If the rest of your life was like last week, what kind of legacy would you leave?

month, 6 months, year.

Is that the kind of legacy you want to leave.

- Maybe you have never thought about what true success is all about?

- Maybe you need to for the first time surrender your life to Jesus by faith.

- Maybe you have surrendered to Christ but are realizing “ I think Ive been more impacted the culture than I thought I was - Gotten off Track

God can get you back on track by the power of His word. As he changes our beliefs through his word and grows us in faith, then our behavior will follow suit.

When you sense God calling you to change or do something new or uncomfortable…

The world is a better place because Michelangelo didn’t say, “I don’t do ceilings.”

The world is a better place because Martin Luther didn’t say, “I don’t do doors.”

The world is a better place because David didn’t say, “I don’t do giants.”

The world is a better place because Peter didn’t say, “I don’t do Gentiles.”

The world is a better place because Paul didn’t say, “I don’t do letters.”

The world is a better place because Mary didn’t say, “I don’t do virgin births.”

The world is a better place because Jesus didn’t say, “I don’t do crosses.”

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What is GOd calling you to do? How does he want you to define success in your life. What will yoy do with your dash.

Prayer