pilgrim in progress

**These are my unedited notes. I may try to edit them later and make them more readable.

Life never works according to our plans.

No one is more influential in your life than you are because no one talks to you more than you do.

Life is like going from an astronaut to archeologist.

Ages 20-40: Launch – Time of hope and possibility

1.    Planning for what will be

We all have dreams for our life. Dream = desire + determination projected into the future.  We function by thought and desire. We develop attractions and hopes towards certain things. We dream that we will be a certain type of person with certain accomplishments. This is not an evil thing. But it is a dangerous thing. Because none of us has the sovereignty to control all the things in us and around us necessary to ensure the realization of our dreams. Often imbedded in our dreams is desire for self-sovereignty. Find ourselves critiquing God’s sovereignty in light of what we would do if we were sovereign.

It’s not wrong to dream but it is dangerous because our life is imbedded in a larger story. The earlier we realize this the better off we will be.

2.    Assessing your potential
We are always measuring our potential and dreaming about what we will accomplish. It is easy though to forget how deeply flawed we are.

3.    Physical health and vitality

DANGER! We begin to attach IDENTIY, MEANING, and PURPOSE and inner sense of WELL-BEING to DREAMS, POTENTIAL, AND PHYSICAL HEALTH (subtle capture of the heart). If this happens when we inevitably loose a dream, accomplishment, and our physical health then we loose ourselves.

DANGER! Without really knowing it, we begin to ask the CREATION to provide what only the CREATOR can give (Jer 10). We are left deeply dissatisfied with God. Feeling ripped off. No vibrance left.

Good things have become bad things because those good things became God-replacements.

There are people in the room right now who are struggling with their story. You are afraid of what has happened and afraid of what will happen next. You are not struggling with your story because God has been evil but because it is not the story that you were writing for you.

The most significant idols in our life are not religious ones.

We tend to forget that your personal story is a part of a greater story that is being written for purposes larger than your definition of comfort, contentment, satisfaction, and happiness.

We begin to wake up when we find our allegiance is in what God is doing!

God is sovereign over all the details of our life. Acts 17. He exercises his sovereignty so that we would known Him more deeply and be conformed into the image of His son.

God is more concerned with our conformity to Christ than our comfort in life.

I do not want to be rebuilt, I want life to be easy.
I don’t want to be holy, I want life to be predictable.
I don’t want to serve God, I want people to like me.
I don’t want to sacrifice, I want nice vacations.

I want, I want, I want.

Could it be that God is prying open our hands that hold onto the things that will destroy us.

We are broken people in fundamental need of rebuilding. That is the story that God calls us into.  A story of great need and grand grace!

We come to a place where we realize that we do not want God. We want our dreams and we are not willing to let go.

What happens at Mid-Life
Archeologist
We begin to dig into the mound of our own existence and come face to face withthe weakness and failures and harsh realities of the breakdown of our bodies.

Choice point – Will I give way to fear and disappointment or enjoy an even deeper experience of God’s transforming grace?

We either realize that God in taking a dream away was actually giving us more or we turn our back on God.

There are many today in the church who don’t even realize it but they have turned their back on God. They are so hurt and discouraged because the story that they held onto did not come to fruition.

Could it be that God knows if I got every dream and every accomplished and vibrant physically to the end of life that I will never be satisfied because creation can NEVER do what only the CREATOR can.

Our story cannot fulfill us. Only God can.

Learning to Celebrate Uncomfortable Grace
1 Peter 1:3-9
God puts us in the cauldren of His grace and boils us. We need to see our trials, disappointments, suffering as God’s means of refining grace.

Questions for Reflection
What story gets you up in the morning?
What story are you attaching your hope too?
What story are you fighting for?
If only I had _________ then my life would be ________? What would you place in there?

God has give his grace not to make your story work but to invite you to a better story, a story of God’s boundless love coming to sinful people choosing to fundamentally rebuild them. That is something to hook your identity in. It will never betray or fail.

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