The Fire is What Forms Me

End result: 

Text: Message: Daniel 3:1-30, Daniel 6:1-28; Psalms 135:15-18; Romans 12:1-2; Hebrews 13:6; Joshua 1:9

Thesis (sermon in one sentence): You don’t choose the fires you face, but you choose what they form you into!

Story:

Image:

Metaphor:

Layer 1: Warm-up

Welcome to LP

Shout out team that won the X’s & O’s game…can’t wait to get you guys some snow cones later!

Tonight, we’re continuing a series we started last week called WON’T. BACK. DOWN. Somebody say that with me…say WON’T. BACK. DOWN.

Uhhhhhh y’all sound good!

We’re talking about being courageous in a world of comfort & compromise. Tonight, we start right in the middle of maybe one of the most uncomfortable situations imaginable.

Layer 2: Confirmation Bias

If there’s a few constants that I’ve found in my time in youth ministry, it’s:

Very few really WANTED to go back to school

Traffic on Culebra is ALWAYS a nightmare

& almost every dad loses their cool anytime someone touches the thermostat.

Layer 3: Funny

Come on, nothing probably scares some of us more than the thought of our dad catching us touching the thermostat.

Layer 4: Ouch

See, you and I, we are meant to be thermostats, of sorts.

We are thermostats in that, we have been given the authority to actually be able change the emotional and spiritual temperature of the world around us.

You wanna know how I know that? Because each and every one of you have encountered someone in this school year already that has sucked the life out of a conversation.

& if you can’t think of someone…you might be the person!

Thermometer types of people just look at the world and go, “yep, buncha sinners going to hell. Our world’s jacked up. There is no hope.”

But thermostats decide to say, “I don’t see sinners: I see saints that have a bright future in God! Our world on its own is jacked up, but it doesn’t have to stay that way: because there is HOPE and that hope has a name…HIS NAME IS JESUS!”

Too many people allow the world to set the tone for them, when in reality: they should be setting the tone in the culture!

Imagine how stressed out your dad would be if your house decided what temperature it wanted to be!

Layer 5: Emotional Surgery

& I wonder what kind of temperature we would create for those around us…if we were stuck in the same situation as our homies Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

I wonder who out of us would rise up, and who out of us would shrink back.

Layer 6: Theological Application

The Fire Forms Your Faith

The Fire Forms Your Focus

The Fire Forms Your Future

Think about the thermostat in your house: if it’s set at 78 and you change it to 68, what’s gonna happen? Aside from your dad smacking you upside the head.

Does the temperature automatically change? Nope: it changes over time.

See, your environment today does a great job of trying to get you to acclimate to a norm that is not your reality.

Layer 7: Full Circle

The best feature of a thermostat isn’t the beautiful display or if I can play Fortnite on it; the best feature of a thermostat is that it keeps the temperature, where it needs to be.

God’s been preparing you your whole life, not to be flashy, not to try to be all big & impressive, but to simply be CONSISTENT on what He’s designed you to good: to be good! To be kind! To be loving! To tell people about