Episode 1 - Destiny
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Transcript
Hey guys, it's Alan here at church and starting this SHIFT church podcast don't really know what it's going to be called. We're just kind of trying to experiment with it to see how it goes and see where we wanted to what we want it to become.
So, this is the first installment of our blog and what these blogs to really be a time for us to talk a little bit more about a concept from Sunday that I preached about on as a way to go in a little bit more detail maybe describe more of what I was thinking even on a Sunday morning seeing what really comes out as the main thing and what really gets people thinking and maybe going into more detail on that for our @Groups and for your own individual lives.
Something from this past Sunday that I wanted to talk about is “Destiny.” That we're “destiny” I said on Sunday depending on your frame of reference you might have some different history behind it, like some weird fatalistic voodoo or perspective of God that He is like this just genie in a bottle that wants to give you everything that you want, and He'll change your life by giving you this wonderful destiny that you simply have to declare it in your own life. I think this word along the years has been used and abused misunderstood.
I've been reading this book and I just finished it this week called The Circle Maker by Mark Batterson and it's a book about prayer. It's a neat book someone pick it up but one of the things that I got from it was this concept of destiny and how destiny is not this fatalism is not this unknown it's not a mystery. It is simply the result of your decisions. The formula is your defining decisions plus your daily decisions equals your destiny. You can know where you're going to end up by looking the decisions that you've been making throughout your life, where they have brought you, and where they're going to take you into the future if you keep doing the same things. They're going to lead you into a certain destiny.
On Sunday we talked about how every decision we make shapes our future and we can make these defining these decisions that they shift the trajectory of our lives. You make a defining decision coupled with new daily decisions. It’s not making those defining decisions and then going back to your old daily decisions, because then it really wasn't a defining decision. But you make this defining decision followed by new daily decisions and that changes your destiny, your future.
We talk about this here at SHIFT church, that we want life transformation. We want to grow and get better as we say, “We have a plan. And that plan is about you and us together getting better at doing this thing called ‘life.’ So that when we go out into the world we're more authentic; with our lives, with our faith, and with what we say we believe.” So, it's us; it's you and us together becoming better and being transformed. As we say in our vision “personal spiritual transformation.” That's what we want we want; to press forward. For each one of us to get better at doing this thing called life. Living out our faith. Living out our faith in every area of our lives, to where it's not this compartmentalized thing where we have our faith experience on a Sunday and maybe at a small group, but it doesn't have anything to do with the rest of our lives.
But how does your life and faith mingle together how do they intertwine? How are they so interconnected that it changes your everyday life. Because with God it's never too late to make a new defining decision to make a new defining decision that shifts your trajectory and changes your future, changes your destiny.
So, I want to talk a little bit about this in in terms of a conversation I had last Thursday on a road trip to Phillipsburg talking about TV dramas and how they're often not about plotline necessarily, but they’re about people, they're about relationships. You have this full cast of people and the show is about how they interrelate with each other and how their characters grow deeper. They have a saying in the film industry calling some characters “two-dimensional,” which basically means they don't really have a lot of personality you can really relate to, they're very shallow, they don't have a lot of context to them. But in our daily lives every person is 3D and so learning to live our lives in 3D, being a character in our own lives and learning how we relate to others around us. TV dramas have this interesting way of developing characters and how, oftentimes, they introduce situations or challenges or even characters that you can see how the main cast reacts and responds to this new character, this new situation, this new challenge, or this emergency.
Like back in the 90s when I was in high school we watched shows like 7th Heaven and Everwood, but it's interesting to see how they how the characters change. For instance, in 7th Heaven, you see how the girls in the show are wholesome and innocent and growing up as pastor’s daughters. Then they introduce that rebel boyfriend that none of the family likes, but you get to see how all the characters, not just the girls respond to that character.
Now, in the conversation on Thursday we talked about another show that when they introduced this certain character...everybody hated him even the audience. Everyone hated him. He was a terrible character and it actually ended up killing the show, so it's interesting to see how when different characters and situations that are introduced into people's lives, to observe the way the plot even of different shows takes a turn and how it can really affect the life of the show.
So, what does that have to do with our own lives as is the quote from the movie, The Holiday, that says “You're supposed to be the main character in your own life.” So what does it look like for you to be the main character in your own life? How do you respond to situations, or to people that are introduced to your life; emergencies, drama, conflict, or challenges that arise in your life?
How do we help each other to make these decisions? Because we want to see our lives transformed. We want to get better at doing this thing called life. We watch these shows and we see how these different characters respond negatively to situations and we almost subconsciously think, “I don't want to make those decisions because look how their life ended up.” You can learn from someone else in the TV show setting.
Here in the culture at SHIFT Church, this is where our mandate comes from, “Shifting everyday relationships into authentic community to live God's adventure together; fully alive.” So this is what we're talking about in our own lives. We need help to make these decisions, to learn how to respond to challenges, how to respond to opportunities, how to respond to people, how to respond to emergencies, how do we respond to life and also cultivate this new life trajectory. Maybe it’s not even around a situation or a challenge or a person, maybe it's just God saying, “Hey you see that in your own life? Hey, you need you need to shift your thinking, you need to shift your trajectory and change the outcome of your life.
Paul even says this in Scripture he says, “Imitate my life, my way of living.” He’s saying, imitate my way of viewing the world, my faith, because look at the outcome of my life. He even says in Ephesians 5, “Imitate Christ.” He invites them “imitate me as I imitate Christ.” This is where our measurables come from. When we start to imitate Christ, when we start to imitate others that we respect, their way of life, then we start to initiate that same behavior in our own lives and then others start to take notice and they're like, “Hey, tell me about that,” and you instigate this same thinking and behavior in others. Every day you get better so look at every day as an opportunity to shift your trajectory to change your destiny for the better, to get better at doing this thing called life, to grow in our faith, to grow in maturity, to grow in your faith, growing in our understanding of Christ, growing in our understanding of ourselves, and our understanding of how God sees us. This then leads us to understand how He wants us to bless, serve, interact with, love others, and how you can transform those everyday relationships into authentic community. Learning what it means to live God's adventure in your own life.
This is my encouragement you to this week, to see your life as better together seeing how you can engage in relationship in a way that is life altering. Shifting your trajectory. Seeing someone else's life in your @Group or in your one-on-one close personal relationship and seeing things in their life that you think, “I love that. I love your perspective on how you view that.” Engage. Ask more questions. It's not just about asking, “hey, I'm thinking about making this big life-altering decision, what do you think what do you guys think?” Now there may be opportunities and reasons for inviting the community into your decision-making processes, but it's really about surrounding yourself with a group of friends, a group of people who love you and who you love and want to connect more with; even though you may not know everyone really well at the beginning. That's why we say it takes time to create authenticity in these relationships. Real, true depth, relational depth, and becoming more 3D in our character and them, in essence, being characters in our lives around us, seeing how their depth in their own life, the depth in they're thinking, the depth and their faith, and starting to see things in others’ lives and in our own lives that we say, “I want to imitate that. As they're imitating Christ, I'm seeing their life is better and I want to get better, so I'm gonna start to imitate that. I'm gonna start to initiate that in my own life.” Then others are going to start to see the result of that and say, “Hey, what did you do? I want to do that myself.”
So I want to encourage you this week to engage in relationship. Engage with others in a way that invites this way that we can shift our thinking shifting our trajectory to change our destiny. To get better. To grow. To become mature in our lives. And see how we can do that better together.
I pray you guys have a great week and I pray that you will start to see how this podcast can really start to shift your thinking in your own life and be encouraged as you as you live your life week in and week out. I pray blessings over you and I will see you on Sunday.
