Big Idea: Lesson Recap (6-10)

How is your story going?

It’s Nov and we have been back at church for 5 months now. What’s your story look like so far? How have you dealt with your struggles, your questions, your hardships?... Have you dealt with them? Have you made time to seek God in your day so that he can walk with you through this season of your life? There are some things that we will go through in life because life is just hard at times and it’s a tough season. But, there are other times were we go through things because we choose what we want over what God wants. If you are in that place then just remember that all you have to do is lay the pen down and surrender your wants.

God’s Design vs Our Desires

Sometimes the hardest seasons are not the ones were we’ve been called to carry more spiritually but were we’ve been called to give up somethings. To lay some dreams down. To surrender some desires. The hard part is usually us wrestling with our heart, our desires, our wants. When we talked about purpose we talked about our affections and the things that we love.

Q: What was something that was hard for you to lay down on the altar but now you can look back and be thankful for it?

Turning down a job, leaving a relationship, changing a major, etc.

Who’s writing your story

It can seem so hard to lay down our pens and let God write the story that he has far us. In our fast paced crazy world were everything from family, to friends, to politics and work and school and relationships.. that was a lot so let me say that again.. can grab more than just our attention. These things can grab our hearts. It can be hard to remember that there is actually a Big Story that is being told that is greater than the news headlines and more important than picking majors in school and even more important than deciding on a career path. If we are not actively reading sacred scripture and spending time daily talking to God (20/20) we will lose sight of that Big story and we will allow all of these little stories related to jobs and relationships and social media to shape our story. These stories can have different levels of importance but they should never guide our lives. So, I ask “Who’s writing your story?” How often to you pause and consider that your story is designed to be lived a certain way. When our worldview.. meaning the way in which we view the world matches how God actually designed the world then we can thrive. But, before we can talk about thriving let’s talk about worldview.

Let’s talk worldview

Do you know what doctrine means?

“a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a Church, political party, or other group.”

These beliefs shape how you see the world around you and inside of you. Beliefs shape behavior just like thoughts shape emotions and emotions shape thoughts. Our beliefs and our actions are interconnected.

Worldview matters

Worldview matters. If you grew up in a home were money was scarce you might have a worldview that says, I need to make a lot of money so that I can have nice things and never feel like I’m poor. Or you could have grown up in a home with lots of money and always had nice things and have a worldview that says that I want to make money so that I can continue feeling well off. Two different life experiences that led to the same place.. a deep value of materialistic things.

Maybe your house was full of prayer and bible reading and your family served in different ministries in the church. So you world view says, of course Christians are supposed to be involved.. that’ s apart of being in the church.

Maybe your the only one from your family that goes to church and your looking around at others to learn not just what Christians know, but what they do. Your looking around to see how important is prayer.. they talk about it but do they do? How important is it to be involved… they show up but do they serve. These things are shaping your worldview.

I know a young lady that really grew her faith after she went to college. She had experienced a season of a lot of pain when she was younger just dealing with family stuff. College by the way is when a lot of young adults leave their faith.. mostly bc they start studying things deeply for the first time… writing papers and reading books in-depth and in a way that affects their emotions they are studying science, math, English, history, etc. in ways that are good and diligent, but they are studying with a level of real commitment to growth that they rarely brought to their faith. Their learning stuff.. taking it home and still working on it… homework.. They end up learning more about various subject matters while still only having an immature faith. By that I mean they end up knowing more about their math or chemistry book after a single semester then they ever knew about the Bible, bc they maybe just read it hear and there but never took the time to study it and truly understand scripture.

This young lady was in that kind of environment. Growing in her education on a college campus. During this time someone invited her to church. She went and the message that Sunday was about suffering and it spoke to her. That God could not only understand her pain, but use it. She was hooked. She said that she grew up going to church. But that for her family it more so a social thing. They went, but they weren’t really disciples of Jesus Christ. They were attendees… there is a difference. Just because you show does not mean you grow... During college she started the journey of actually being a disciple. Her worldview growing up was that Christianity is more of a social event. As a middle school and then high schooler even as she was growing and maturing as a person her faith was not maturing. Though life had been hard and brought her through some heart aching times her parents discipled her in a way were her faith had remained superficial and social. But she could see that God was offering her the chance to grow in relationship with him.

You are at an age where you need to take time to ask yourself what is my worldview? What shapes it? Do you really believe that the Bible has a world view worth fully embracing?

People debate world views. Yours is wrong and mine is right or they try and make everyone happy and say we are all right. “What’s right for you is not right for me. Live your truth and I will live my truth.” You have your beliefs and I have mine.

but there are beliefs that no one debates..

Gravity

This is coconut mid fall… no one is volunteering to hang out underneath this thing thinking that if they deny gravity as a real thing then the coconut might just freeze mid-air… no gravity exist whether you believe in it or not.

Goose Poop

No one questions gravity.. gravity is why we look overhead when we hear geese flying because no one wants to get pooped on.

Rather you believe in Gravity or not [show next slide]...

it still believes in you [Next slide]

We as Christians believe that God set the world up a certain way. That he designed the world to be viewed and lived a certain way.

God’s design vs our desires

There is a way that life has been designed and when we fight against that. We ignore how God designed things and we get stuck.

When the person who thinks that money will make them happy finally find out that working all the hours in the world and buying all of the nice things doesn’t fulfill them. Their earthly passions didn’t match their divine purpose.

Or the young man who thought that if he just found the right person then his whole world would be brighter only to find out that identity and worth can’t be found in another person.

The girl who thinks that if she can just move away then all of her problems will go away only to find out that no matter where she goes her heart follows.. so she has to eventually deal with herself. If she’s Christian she has to ask herself if she really believes and embraces those set of beliefs that the Bible teaches? Is she willing to read and study and wrestle with the Word of God.

Doctrine

When we talked about the Big Idea of a Name, I shared a story of from about 10 years ago I was talking to a young lady [talk about how we hung out, went on dates, etc.]…

eventually we sat down with Sis. Rachel. And she asked us some questions:

Do you hold hands, have you ever kissed, would you feel a certain way if the other person hung out with someone else the same way you two hang out?

We answered honestly and she said you two are in a relationship but you are lying to other people and yourselves. She looked at the young lady and then back at me and said, she may not know it, but she feels like your not ready tell the world publicly how you feel about her like your embarrassed or ashamed of her.. [inflect voice] the young lady later said that Sis. Rachel was right, that even though she didn’t know it, she felt like our lack of a label left her feeling as though I had something to hide about her.. I was like Sis. Rachel why did you have to go and tell her that..

Point that she made.

It was a relationship with no label… if you would have asked I would have given you a really spiritual answers. Like, we’re letting God guide it or we’re waiting to hear from God on it. But without a label we had no direction.. to intentionality.. no defined purpose to our relationship.. I was failing as Christian man, but didn’t see it and without an older wiser person who’s counsel I sought to speak into my life, I would have continued to fail, even with good spiritual intentions. Being spiritual is not enough. I was filled with the Spirit of God, but I lacked relational maturity in that area of my life. You see, I had never seen it done. My parents were not commited Christians who came to church every week and could call me out. I was 25 so it wasn’t their job, but man, I def needed some guidance. See, without the label our hearts were intermingled but without any intentionality behind it. We had no planned direction.. we were just drifting down a river of emotions, passions and desires… we went through all of the ups and downs of a relationship.. we argued at times, we laughed at other times..

Remember the story about the fence and the barn [share that example again]

We had no label.. so there was nothing to protect our relationship.. because on paper there was no relationship, but in practice.. there was.. the label would have been our fence.. something to protect our hearts because it would have held us accountable to something.

But what if you have no label.. then’s what’s right and what’s wrong? Where are the lines drawn.. where are the boundaries… where are the standards of what your heart should expect?

How do you really know if you’re going in the direction that you should go if there is no label… not every dating relationship leads to marriage.. but if there is no intentionality then you will most likely end up with unintended consequences… I would tell a younger Kevin, if you are going to have heartache at least have it bc you were pursuing something that was clear and labeled and defined. You deserve that. You see we had a lot of ups and downs and a lot of moments of hurt.. pain but no progress bc we weren’t invested in an open, public dating relationship..

[We]

When it comes to God some people want a relationship with no label… no accountability… no real commitment… no personal standards.. no real spiritual direction… you can attend church faithfully and still drift spiritually… attendance is not the goal.. you have a purpose… he called you by name and gave you his name… There’s a purpose behind that.. but we live in a world where people say I’m not really religious, I’m more so spiritual. Or they say it’s more about the relationship than the label? To have a label, a name, to be able to say that you are a follower of Jesus Christ separates you from this world and others who just claim generic spirituality.

Q: Why do some people just refer to themselves as spiritual instead of using a traditional label (Christian, Muslim, etc)?

Q: What’s the hardest about being a follower of Jesus Christ?

- Do you grow from the hardship? You are designed to.

Q: How does choosing to be a Christian shape your purpose?

- Have you allowed it to shape what you hunger for? What you desire? Remember you goals are not what you write down, but what you want.. what you desire? Are you allowing your faith to shape your desires?

Q: How does your doctrine/worldview impact how you treat people with different worldviews?

Thanksgiving is coming up and there will be some headed conversations about politics around the dinner table. As Christians our speech should always be seasoned with salt. People should be able to walk away saying, even if I disagree with so and so I respect how they handled themselves. (I’m still growing in this area myself.. I hope that we all are).

Stuck

I was used the example of a maze to talk about God’s Big Ideas. That he formed the world and designed it to be lived a certain way. You have to get this. I have to understand that understanding how God designed the world and equally important how he designed us to live in it allows us to thrive. I doesn’t mean that there is no more heartache or pain. But it means that you know there is a God and his church to walk with you through it.

Choosing to be in a covenant relationship with God means that you have access

How is your story going?

So, I close where I started. How is your story going? Are you growing?